I don't think it is so much a bug as something that hasn't been done. It

is on the to-do list:

While I agree full moderation of loading photos is an enhancement not a bug,
I think that in its absence it the correct behaviour is to prevent moderated
users from loading photos, not to allow it.

For example, consider group that allows anyone to join but moderated the
first post. As it is at the moment anyone can join and upload photos without
the moderators being aware. I would expect that a user on moderation would
not be allowed to make any updates to the group without permission. I'll
post this on the Beta group topic.

Noel

Noel,

A moderated user is allowed to upload photos - surely this is a bug?

I don't think it is so much a bug as something that hasn't been done. It is on the to-do list:


Also:

In Yahoo Groups we had a checkbox to prevent a member from uploading files, but for photos we only got a notification, no ability to moderate or block an individual member from uploading.

The following are some observations and wishes from what I have tried
(perhaps I've missed something).

The rest of these I don't see on the to-do list.

Posting in beta@ a well-written description of what you want is likely to be the best way to get it on the to-do list.

Myself I'd like to see a "grand unification" of sorts of photos, files, and possibly wiki-pages such that they have the same capabilities, despite being presented differently. That is, I don't see why the ability to make subfolders (aka nested albums) should be a feature of Files but not Photos. Likewise with cut-and-paste for moving them around.

And the other way too: if we gain the ability to moderate or selectively block the upload of photos, we should have that ability with respect to files also. And wiki pages, perhaps.

Shal

Donald,

"Where there is great power there is great responsibility . . ."

I was thinking of that even as I wrote my message.

The only reason I hesitate is that there were (thankfully few) cases reported in the Yahoo mod groups of a moderator being either confused or spiteful and setting about deleting the group's entire archive.

Maybe there's a way to put some safety guards on such an axe, such as having the deleted messages go into a recoverable state for some period of time, a bit like the Windows' Recycle Bin, and make emptying that bin require a higher level of moderator permission.

Shal

Hi Shal and Sarah,

There is a minor glitch in that the downloaded messages do not contain their message numbers in an obvious way.

However, in the worst case there is a simple URL that allows someone with the group.io cookies for a moderator to obtain the message source (more precisely a cleansed version of the source), this version (at least for my group's messages) gives the original Yahoo message number. So it should be easy to script it up. A quick and dirty script can be written using wget (or the Mac equivalent) with some simple text processing. I've just tested URL with wget and it works.

I think that only group moderators can view the source of the message.

David.

Shal,

"Where there is great power there is great responsibility . . ."

Winston Churchill, 1906



Donald


On Mon, 12 Jun 2017 15:07:17 -0700, "Shal Farley" <shals2nd@...>
wrote:

A half-dozen clicks per message is too much for deleting them manually.
Perhaps a feature to request would be to show moderators a button or
link in the "All Posts By This Member" search results that allows a
moderator to delete them all. But oh, what a terrible axe to have at hand.

The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who
speak it. --George Orwell

Noel . . .

On Mon, 12 Jun 2017 22:38:46 +0100, "Noel Leaver"
<n.leaver@...> wrote:

We offered him both those options. His reply was it was our problem not his
to delete them, he had no intention of joining the new group, and he would
issue a DMCA takedown request immediately if we did transfer any of his
postings.

I think he is incorrect but at the very worst Mark would handle the
DMCA request for you. Yahoo's stand was that the user had to delete
his own posts, and that may be a reasonable demand upon the
complainer.

You could contact Mark about this and see how this would be handled,
if you really want to make the transfer.

You could also try to thwart the person's attempts to delete all the
posts by telling him that he would have to file a separate request for
each occurrence, with specifics about the message like message number
at the least.

If you want to move the group, I would suggest calling his bluff by
making the transfer, perhaps without advance notice, then make the
announcement in the Yahoo group and shut off all posting and make it
announcement only right away.

Of course, it's up to you what you do. If you think the troublemaker
is worth keeping enough that you'll keep the group on Yahoo, then you
will still have the troublemaker. He may not be a troublemaker, of
course, if you stay with Yahoo, and that's something you'll have to
guess ahead of time.

I just hate to punish the rest of your members with staying with Yahoo
when it's only one member who's pitching a fit. In my eyes that sort
of person isn't an asset to the group anyway.

Donald

The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who
speak it. --George Orwell

Duane,

I believe he would have to give an exact location of (link to) the
"offending" material before he could request a DMCA action. ... DMCA
gets abused a lot, but has very specific instructions for use.

The procedures are somewhat up to the hosting site to establish.
Groups.io's are specified in the TOS:
/static/tos

Of note is the requirement:

o a description of where the material that you claim is infringing
is located on the Service, with enough detail that we may find it
on the Service;

That's fairly non-specific and Groups.io could accept something as broad
as "messages from xxx in group yyy".

At the other extreme I've read it alleged that some services go so far
as to require a separate filing for each message.

The risk to the group owner is that:
"Groups.io may also at its sole discretion limit access to the Service
and/or terminate the memberships of any users who infringe any
intellectual property rights of others, whether or not there is any
repeat infringement."

But I think it unlikely Mark would take that stand in the case of transferred messages. I think that's an escape for much more serious cases.

Shal

Related to Duane's comment, I don't even think he'd have a case for a DCMA take down request if the material had not been published. I think 'published' implies making the material *public*, as in, public group. But IANAL.

Sent from my iPhone

On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 02:44 pm, Noel Leaver wrote:

he had no intention of joining the new group, and he would
issue a DMCA takedown request immediately if we did transfer any of his
postings.

Hmm, how would he know they'd been transferred if he didn't join? I believe he would have to give an exact location of (link to) the "offending" material before he could request a DMCA action. And as was mentioned, if the archives are set to private, he could only do that by joining. DMCA gets abused a lot, but has very specific instructions for use.

Duane

Noel,

His reply was it was our problem not his to delete them, he had no
intention of joining the new group, and he would issue a DMCA
takedown request immediately if we did transfer any of his postings.

Technically he's right that it isn't his job to delete them. However I think at that point I might have shrugged and let him file the request.

I would also, as a courtesy to Mark, let him know about the situation and see if he would mass-delete the person's messages (or omit them during transfer).

A half-dozen clicks per message is too much for deleting them manually. Perhaps a feature to request would be to show moderators a button or link in the "All Posts By This Member" search results that allows a moderator to delete them all. But oh, what a terrible axe to have at hand.

Shal

开云体育

You could have just given him a certain number of days to delete his posts

with the understanding that any that are left get transferred and after
that, he would have to contact io tech support to see about taking down the
rest of their messages.

Or, he/she could join the io group and delete the rest.

We offered him both those options. His reply was it was our problem not his
to delete them, he had no intention of joining the new group, and he would
issue a DMCA takedown request immediately if we did transfer any of his
postings.

I believe he did not want the group transferred and was trying to stop it
happening.

Noel

The photos on the previous version of our group on Yahoo were a complete mess so I was not too bothered about taking them across to io groups. But I'd hoped io might have better facilities for controlling the uploading of photos to prevent photos on the new group getting into the same state, but the improvements seem only marginal. The following are some observations and wishes from what I have tried (perhaps I've missed something).

A moderated user is allowed to upload photos - surely this is a bug? I can see moderating uploads of photos would be a lot of work, but at least disallow uploads when the user is moderated.

I want to restrict creation of new albums to moderators, but allow postings to some albums. I hoped setting "moderators can upload, users can view" at the group level and "Group access" at the album level would achieve this, but it does not allow users to upload to the album - I feel it ought, else the "Group access" option is meaningless when the overall setting is "only moderators can upload". Alternatively, a new "Only moderators can create albums" setting, but I don't like that as much.

The big change I would like is to be able to set up sub-albums. I would like setting up of albums at the top level to be able to be restricted to moderators, and for each of these albums to have a setting controlling the creation of sub-albums: moderators only; users can create with group access; users can create sub-albums with personal access (i.e. only they (and moderators) can upload).

For the present I've disallowed uploading photos, as the facility to post photos embedded in a message caters for a lot of cases and is searchable, but eventually I would like to be able to allow uploading photos.

Noel

Noel . . .


On Mon, 12 Jun 2017 09:01:40 +0100, "Noel Leaver"
<n.leaver@...> wrote:

We decided it was not worth the risk of trying to transfer postings - even if we had been able to filter out postings from that person someone else might later have objected. So we decided to leave all the messages and photos on Yahoo as an archive and start with an empty group on io groups.

You could have just given him a certain number of days to delete his
posts with the understanding that any that are left get transferred
and after that, he would have to contact io tech support to see about
taking down the rest of their messages.

Or, he/she could join the io group and delete the rest.

Just my opinion, but I would not let one person interfere with
transferring the group.

Donald

The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who
speak it. --George Orwell

David,

Just a quick addition to Shal's remarks. My group's transferred
messages contains a special header field called "X-Yahoo-Msgnum" that
should correspond to the original Yahoo message id.

That sounds like just the ticket. With a downloaded copy of the transferred messages it should be possible to write a simple program that extracts the corresponding numbers. Or do that by access to the archive online - depending on your tools.

Then another filter to update the file given that list of corresponding message numbers.

Shal

Sarah,

Not many messages would have been deleted but enough to throw the
message numbering each month by a few numbers. Is there anyway your
program writers can transfer the messages with exactly the same
numbering?

I don't work for Groups.io, so I can't speak to what's possible. For that you'd need to contact [email protected] - but it sounds like David has you covered for some of the technical details.

Shal

Hi Sarah,

Just a quick addition to Shal's remarks.? My group's transferred messages contains a special header field called "X-Yahoo-Msgnum" that should correspond to the original Yahoo message id. Hopefully we can figure out how to use that to help match files to links to the transferred messages. We would need to figure out how to create an automated script to do it, but hopefully that's doable.

It's also possible to download the archives of a Groups.io group. That also might help automate the process. The trick will be to be sure that we can correctly match the Yahoo ID to the Groups.io message number that is used to reference the message.

We may need some help from the Groups.io support people. I'm hoping that we can convince them to do a trial transfer of your group so we can work things out in advance.

You won't need to post your file here, since I am also a member of your group. The file in question contains links corresponding to Yahoo message numbers. The only technical problem is the matching that I discussed above.

David.

Noel

Shal

Noel,

... but one objected strongly to any of his posts being transferred,
claiming copyright, and said if we did transfer them he would issue a
DMCA takedown notice on io groups.

There's one in every crowd.

We decided it was not worth the risk of trying to transfer postings -
even if we had been able to filter out postings from that person
someone else might later have objected.

I Am Not A Lawyer, but - so what?

As a matter of courtesy to objecting members I would probably delete their messages after the transfer. Or if there's too many of them inquire about a way to do that in bulk.

But as to DMCA threats...

My understanding of the DMCA safe harbor provisions is that curing such a notice is as simple as deleting the messages. Too, if your group's messages are not public I'm not sure that DMCA even applies; but that's a subtlety where a lawyer might have a field day.

Mark did give some consideration to this topic when first setting up the group transfer process. His conclusion was that he'd handle the DCMA take-down notices if and when they happen.


Shal