On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 02:28 PM, isis feral wrote:

I'm not exactly writing Groups.io off as a result. I'm certainly not moving my groups.

I should sincerely hope not on both points.

But for the type of groups I tend to take care of, with many people with disabilities and limited technical skills, it's something that will likely make me go elsewhere next time I need to start one.

Ultimately I suspect that that approach will fail. While making every effort to accommodate those "with disabilities and limited technical skills" is clearly a worthwhile enterprise, I think it is a mistake to work on the assumption that it is possible to use much of "the internet" without at least some degree of ongoing learning and adapting to change. You only need to look at the Groups.io Changelog (via the "Updates" Group) to realise that a lot of changes can take place over a week / month / year, etc; at least the groups.io changes tend to be of greater impact on Owners and Moderators rather than rank and file members who may not even realise that something has changed.

Another flaw is that no group (and I don't just mean a Groups.io group) cannot operate in isolation from the wider internet ecosystem. There are countless ISPs and in some respects each of them has a unique relationship with a "group provider", and to complicate matters further they may use third party carriers to handle their traffic. Furthermore although my ISP provides me with a mail service in reality that mail service is provided by yet another third party provider. Any of the actors in the great play can introduce "improvements" that actually degrade the service that some customers receive; at some point last year my ostensible provider? changed one of their providers and the result that emails sent to addresses of the form [email protected] systematically misrouted. (You should note that groups.io uses that address format a lot) That format with a "+" in it is a perfectly legitimate one, but somehow a service provider that was not visible to the end users managed to screw things up, and it took months to resolve.

So by all means keep searching for the "perfect provider"; just don't expect it to remain perfect for very long, never mind forever.

Chris

Hello everyone

What are the current options or strategies for having a Groups.io group "follow" a Facebook group?? I'm considering creating a Facebook group for members of my Groups.io group who might want to chat via Facebook as well (and so that other people who don't want to join the Groups.io group can join the Facebook group instead), but I would like the mailing list people to be notified when there are new Facebook posts.? In the worst case, I'd post a weekly "What's new on our Facebook group" post manually to the mailing list, but since our group is an ask-and-answer type of group, it would be nice to get more immediate or more automated notifications.

What are various things I can try?

Thanks
Samuel

Bill, I wish I had a good list of providers, or more precisely, a list of good providers, but pretty much every one I've come across has one limitation or another. So I have to decide which limitations are least likely to be a problem for the people in my groups.

For the groups with a lot of people with disabilities that make technology difficult for them, I've had to hold my nose and go to Google Groups, because it's one of the only options that allows manual adding of members. Dealing with invites may seem easy for many, but it's not for everyone, and I've not been able to get a couple of people into my Gio groups because they just can't get through that process.

Otherwise I tend to still prefer Groups.io. I stay away from Yahoo Groups altogether now, because the lack of digest option and archives is a deal breaker. I've also worked with some Mailman lists that were provided by people who had accounts with various providers, but because of the cost have seen some of them go by the wayside when people ran out of money, and then all the archives and work we shared were nuked (reminiscent of Yahoo). I helped with one Mailman groups that was provided as a favor by a friend to a friend, and there we've ended up being a bit at the mercy of someone else's whims. There are various political groups that provide list services, but I would only go there if everyone in the group is aligned with the specific politics of the provider, which doesn't happen all that often.

I know there were other options some years back when I was looking for alternatives, and for the most part it seemed that they would not likely survive, so I didn't even try. Most of them I was never able to find again. Other email list providers have been trying to match social media platforms, which I have zero interest in, but there seem to be more and more of those around.

Sorry, no comprehensive list here, but those have been my thoughts about the various alternatives I've researched over the years for the communities that I work with, who tend to have specific needs that I have to accommodate.

Isis

On 03-Aug-20 9:24 AM, isis feral via groups.io wrote:

I'm not exactly writing Groups.io off as a result. I'm certainly not moving my groups. But for the type of groups I tend to take care of, with many people with disabilities and limited technical skills, it's something that will likely make me go elsewhere next time I need to start one.

I'd be interested to see your list of alternative providers.

--
Bill

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 05:59 PM, Tim Morris wrote:

applicants were getting a daily summary sent to them before being approved.

recently, someone that did not get my automated email, has suddenly become a member subsequent to me sending them an email manually!

i have to admit to finding the system really frustrating, possibly due to my own lack of time to figure out what’s happening exactly....

Tim, I am assuming:
- you have a Restricted group.
- the person used the Join this Group link on your group homepage or emailed to Subscribe. You did not invite them. You did not direct add them.
- you have set up a Pending Subscription Notice. And it is active. ?/helpcenter/ownersmanual/1/managing-member-notices/pending-subscription-notice
- you receive email to the "+owner" address -?/helpcenter/ownersmanual/1/sending-and-receiving-group-owner-email-messages/overview

You can go the Member name in Admin. Click on it. Click on Activity History. It will tell you who approved the membership. If you go to +owner Messages, you can see what the new member wrote in response to your Pending Subscription Notice (where you asked questions, etc.)

Here are the instructions for approving members -?/helpcenter/ownersmanual/1/managing-members/handling-pending-members

Frances


?
--
GMF wiki for help.?Search box at the top of each page.

Check out the?new groups.io Help Center??Use your browser to search or download?the PDF.

John, there's really no need to defend Groups.io from me. I came here because I was impressed with Mark, even before the Yahoo Groups exodus. And I already acknowledged that I appreciate the technical explanations of why this is happening, and that this is not some personal pet policy of Mark's. I still think it's a rotten deal, but I understand now that it's not specific to Groups.io.

Thanks for putting my mind at ease, Duane and Bruce, about it not being likely I'll be kicked out as the owner.

My spam filter experience in my Yahoo mail is that even Yahoo Groups mail ends up there, which I find wildly ironic. You'd think Yahoo could recognize its own mailings. So yeah, not a fan of the spam filters, and I wish I could switch them off. I do plan on getting away from Yahoo in the not too far off future, and hope that whatever provider I pick is much less dysfunctional, as well as doesn't trigger any spam behaviors in any systems anywhere, but time will tell.

Isis

开云体育

Michael,?

--
GMF wiki for help.?Search box at the top of each page.

Check out the?new groups.io Help Center??Use your browser to search or download?the PDF.

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 06:30 PM, Douglas Swearingen wrote:

I use outlook.live.com, which used to be hotmail.? I would not put them on a list of not receiving messages into the spam folder.

Just about any email provider will -- sooner or later -- filter a groups.io message based on some computer algorithm and redirect it to your junk mail folder. "Me too" and "I agree" messages are particularly prone to such "false positives."

The list of email providers on the cited wiki page are those?known to?actually report such messages back to groups.io via?. This list is not exhaustive and I'm sure there are others.

Regards,
Bruce

---

Check out the groups.io Help Center?and?groups.io Owners Manual

开云体育

Michael,

With your Yahoo group or groups over there, did you or someone in the group obtain a 'getmydata' ?? Hoping it was the Yahoo group owner or a moderator with high privileges to obtain the entire group of files/photos/messages.?

The Yahoo group owner or a high moderator can actually obtain the first 1,000 members in an easy CSV file that imports to excel or openoffice or Libre office.? Now, if your group has MORE than 1,000 members, here is a trick ... Make the 1st 1,000 ascending in alphabetical order.? Then change the list to descending in alphabetical order.? This should help snag at least 2,000 members on the roster.? For my group, we nearly had 3,000 members, thus, we tried a few different member arrangements to get the majority of them.? Afterwards, we had then sent out requests for folks to join GroupsIO.

Our hop took about 3 months to return everything back to normal for the most part.? GroupsIO is sooo much better than Yahoo Groups.? So much so, the groups postings have tripled after moving here.?

BMaverick
Yanmar Tractors Owners Group on GroupsIO

On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 05:42 AM, Tim Morris wrote:

However, none of this explains why he was receiving the “daily summary” prior to membership approval.

That was a bug and was squashed on July 2 (just a few minutes after it was reported!),

Duane
--
The official Groups.io user documentation is in the Groups.io Help Center.
GMF's Unofficial Help Wiki: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 04:32 PM, Rubens wrote:

Not just Gmail.
I use OUTLOOK eMail Provider Service
and never had any problem with them.

Others have though.? There's an incomplete list of the email providers that have done this to people at /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/5115#Service-Providers

Duane
--
The official Groups.io user documentation is in the Groups.io Help Center.
GMF's Unofficial Help Wiki: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki

I’m just sticking my oar in here because my similar problems remain unresolved....

Applicants were not receiving my set email in response to a request to join.

those people are called members on one of the pages

applicants were getting a daily summary sent to them before being approved.

recently, someone that did not get my automated email, has suddenly become a member subsequent to me sending them an email manually!

i have to admit to finding the system really frustrating, possibly due to my own lack of time to figure out what’s happening exactly....

Tim Morris

...
IF| We have no control over what our email
| providers do. Almost every big email
| provider is on the list of providers
| where this can happen, except Gmail,


Not just Gmail.
I use OUTLOOK eMail Provider Service
and never had any problem with them.

I prefer Outlook or Yahoo over Gmail.
I don't like the Gmail's interface and
its lack of full compliance with IMAP
rules.


[ ] Rubens














.

To me the most obvious reason to have an expiry on either the email me a link or the re-subscribe is if that link gets into the wrong hands it would allow a ne'er do well access

Emails go astray, or get copied or forwarded in error, or accounts get hacked

So an expiry is a must as far as I can see

Nivard Ovington in Cornwall (UK)

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 02:27 PM, Jim Fisher wrote:

I've
yet to see any reason given for having any expiry date at all.

It may be something similar to invitations (in addition to the record keeping.)? If you don't remove an invitation from the list, it can be used at any time in the future.? There have been a couple of problems where someone was booted from a group and got back in because they still had the invitation.? If there were no expiration on removals, the same thing could happen (at a much later date.)

Duane
--
The official Groups.io user documentation is in the Groups.io Help Center.
GMF's Unofficial Help Wiki: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki

I've been a member of this group (and Beta) almost since the start, and I've
yet to see any reason given for having any expiry date at all. It just seems to
be a pointless irritant.

Jim

Ilana,
I would suggest that you insist on having a backup contact of some kind from each member; a phone/text number or other contact.
Other than a backup contact, it would be far better to educate and strongly encourage your members to use groups.io
Online.? Theycan do that without using a password.
You can find that in the very extensive help available by clicking/tapping the Help at on the onlinr screen.
That particular function is at
?/helpcenter/membersmanual/1/understanding-groups-io-accounts/logging-in-to-your-account?single=true
--

Bob Bellizzi

ISIS,

It seems that you are making some assumptions that don't hold water.? For one, you assume the problem is unique to groups.io.? It isn't, in fact they are one of the few that let you know about it.? Second, you seem to assume that this is a problem where in reality most of the time there are good reasons for it.? Often people die, their mailbox gets deleted or inactivated but groups subscribed to it don't get notified.? Old people often hit the spam icon by mistake is another problem but the member gets emails immediately telling them of the problem and giving them an icon to hit that resubscribes them.? I've had a group for over 20 years on yahoo much like yours where most are older or not too technical, we moved to groups.io with well over 4000 members.? After moving to groups.io last year I found that all but 1500 of them were invalid email addresses.? That means that yahoo was doing exactly what you don't want but wasn't telling anyone and your roster count is useless if you use that figure for anything.? They just stopped sending email to the member and didn't tell us.

Also, when was the last time you had a provider who has groups such as this and the beta group where you can get such marvelous support and reach the developers directly?

John P

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 03:13 PM, Ilana DeBare wrote:

it sounds like I should do two things for spam prevention:

1. In my welcome message, ask everyone to add the groups.io email to their list of contacts.?

For the avoidance of doubt... the "list of contacts" has to be in the mail provider's contact list, not that in an email client.

FWIW my ISP "improved" its email interface with the result that it no longer offered the ability to turn spam filtering off which was a quick and easy way of stopping things being shunted off to a place I could not see unless I went out of my way to find it. As a result I had to load a batch of Groups.io addresses into my service provider's contact list. Theoretically the provider's filtering should have been responsive to my marking messages as Not Spam but it didn't take long for me to realise that it simply ignored this so the only solution was to add a list of Groups.io addresses.

As others have said Groups.io is not the bad guy in all this.

Chris