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Hi everyone,
When setting up group permissions, there are two items: member list
and member directory.
What is the difference, what is the directory for?
Thanks!
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With best regards from Ukraine,
Andre
Skype: menelion_elensule
Twitter: @m_elensule; Facebook: menelion
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The Member List has email addresses and some other info. I reserve that one for moderators. The Directory only has their user name and their avatar.
Duane
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Andre, What is the difference, As Duane mentioned, the Member list includes member's subscription information, and in particular shows their email addresses. I suspect most groups would restrict this list to moderators for privacy reasons. But some groups with restricted membership might allow members to know each other's email addresses. My classmate groups operate this way: we grew up together and in many cases know each other's physical addresses and phone numbers - so showing each other's email addresses is no big deal. Note that as a side-effect, if the Members List is shown to members, then email addresses in the group's Messages archive are not truncated ("fig-leafed"). If the Members list is not shown to Members then email addresses in the body of messages show just the user name (left of the "@" sign) when viewed on the group's Messages pages. what is the directory for? The directory contains links to member's group profile. For a member to appear in the directory that member must choose to reveal some profile information. Again, the group admins must decide as a policy for the group whether to allow members to access this directory. In this case, even if the Directory is hidden, a link to a member's group profile may be present anywhere the member has posted to the group - if the member has made profile information available. Each member's Subscription page has a "Group Profile" tab where the member can edit what information is shown to other members. By default each member's profile starts as a copy of their Account profile, but the member can customize the information shown in each group of which they are a member. Shal On 11/19/2017 9:53 AM, Andre Polykanine wrote: Hi everyone,
When setting up group permissions, there are two items: member list
and member directory.
What is the difference, what is the directory for?
Thanks!
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Shal If the Members list is not shown to Members then email
addresses in the body of messages show just the user name (left of the "@"
sign) when viewed on the group's Messages pages. It seems to me that groups.io has a rather inconsistent story regarding privacy of email addresses. It appears to be the case that if you receive posts via email, you can often?/always? see the poster's email address, regardless of whether you have access to the member list. If you then reply to a post and quote the original message, that quotation will contain whatever your email client put in the 'on such and such a date so and so wrote' bit, and this seems to depend on whether the sender has defined a display name in their profile. If there is no display name, groups.io shows the whole email address, not truncated in the same way as it does for replies via the website. It seems to me that a possible improvement would be for groups.io to assume a display name of the first part of the email address for posters who haven't explicitly defined a display name. Not sure what can be done about the full email address not being visible in the email client, whilst staying compliant with the standards. But it must be possible to only show the defined or inferred display name: after all Yahoo Groups (whose name I hoped I would never have to utter again!...) managed to send out emails for members who had no email address defined within the group. Richard
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Speaking of the truncation (aka fig-leafing), Mark has promised repeatedly that this will be made optional per group (I don't want it in my group). We still don't know when this is going to happen, but every time I've asked, Mark has said he just hasn't gotten around to it yet. It's on the Todo list.
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J
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I don't mind the email address b eing in the client. This is why I moved my list to groups.io. Many of us reply off list, or need to so we need to see the whole email address. All 300 of us have ben on all 4 iterations of this list I took over in 2005.
Take care
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On Nov 20, 2017, at 4:37 AM, Richard L King <rlking@...> wrote:
Shal
If the Members list is not shown to Members then email
addresses in the body of messages show just the user name (left of the "@"
sign) when viewed on the group's Messages pages. It seems to me that groups.io has a rather inconsistent story regarding
privacy of email addresses.
It appears to be the case that if you receive posts via email, you can
often?/always? see the poster's email address, regardless of whether you
have access to the member list.
If you then reply to a post and quote the original message, that quotation
will contain whatever your email client put in the 'on such and such a date
so and so wrote' bit, and this seems to depend on whether the sender has
defined a display name in their profile. If there is no display name,
groups.io shows the whole email address, not truncated in the same way as
it does for replies via the website.
It seems to me that a possible improvement would be for groups.io to
assume a display name of the first part of the email address for posters
who haven't explicitly defined a display name.
Not sure what can be done about the full email address not being visible in
the email client, whilst staying compliant with the standards. But it must
be possible to only show the defined or inferred display name: after all
Yahoo Groups (whose name I hoped I would never have to utter again!...)
managed to send out emails for members who had no email address defined
within the group.
Richard
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Richard, It seems to me that groups.io has a rather inconsistent story
regarding privacy of email addresses. That's true, the inconsistencies and the feature itself are largely borrowed from Yahoo Groups tradition. It appears to be the case that if you receive posts via email, you can
often?/always? see the poster's email address, regardless of whether
you have access to the member list. Always. A fundamental decision in the design of the email support is how much modification to do inside message bodies. For email message delivery the answer has always been "as little as possible". I think at present it is limited to appending the group footer and (at the receiving member's option) replacing attachments with links to stored copies of the attachments. I think this is a good answer, on both efficiency and integrity grounds. Display of messages on site, and the inclusion of messages in Digests, have further processing. Material quoted from prior messages, if detected, is hidden on site under an ellipsis button and is not included in Digests. Email addresses in the message body, excluding those in the groups.io domain (and maybe some few others) are truncated ("fig-leafed") when shown to members, but not when shown to moderators/owners. If you then reply to a post and quote the original message, that
quotation will contain whatever your email client put in the 'on such
and such a date so and so wrote' bit, As it turns out, email services vary considerably in how they preface such quotes in replies. Recognizing them is an on-going update item for Groups.io. and this seems to depend on whether the sender has defined a display
name in their profile. Email services are idiosyncratic about this. But generally yes, many will include only the "Display Name" portion of the From address, if there is one; some will include both Display Name and email address, a few will include only the email address. If there is no display name, groups.io shows the whole email address,
not truncated in the same way as it does for replies via the website. In email, and when viewed by moderators/owners on site, whatever the sender's service put into the message is shown. For members viewing on site Groups.io truncates the address (again with the exception of groups.io addresses). It seems to me that a possible improvement would be for groups.io to
assume a display name of the first part of the email address for
posters who haven't explicitly defined a display name. Again, if you're talking about the preface to a quote, that comes from the sending member's email service. Otherwise that's pretty much what Groups.io already does: the truncated address ("user@...") is shown in place of the Display Name. Not sure what can be done about the full email address not being
visible in the email client, whilst staying compliant with the
standards. Yes, it would be possible. As you noted, Yahoo Groups' "hide" feature is one example implementation; a feature which is available to members of GMF's sister Yahoo! group. Several approaches to this have been discussed in beta@, but nothing has come of it so far. If you're curious, I think "anonymous" would be a good search word, as in groups with anonymous members. Shal
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This has been an issue on Yahoo groups, with some individuals getting all upset when someone ask them for their email address, they were not aware that if one used an email client everyone's email address was totally exposed.
Privacy is only there in the mind of some on the Internet, the reality is if you use the Internet someone knows who you are and where you have been unless you take actions to maintain privacy beyond the average users knowledge.
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On 11/20/2017 11:37 AM, Shal Farley wrote: Richard,
> It seems to me that groups.io has a rather inconsistent story
> regarding privacy of email addresses.
That's true, the inconsistencies and the feature itself are largely borrowed from Yahoo Groups tradition.
> It appears to be the case that if you receive posts via email, you can
> often?/always? see the poster's email address, regardless of whether
> you have access to the member list.
Always.
A fundamental decision in the design of the email support is how much modification to do inside message bodies. For email message delivery the answer has always been "as little as possible". I think at present it is limited to appending the group footer and (at the receiving member's option) replacing attachments with links to stored copies of the attachments.
I think this is a good answer, on both efficiency and integrity grounds.
Display of messages on site, and the inclusion of messages in Digests, have further processing. Material quoted from prior messages, if detected, is hidden on site under an ellipsis button and is not included in Digests. Email addresses in the message body, excluding those in the groups.io domain (and maybe some few others) are truncated ("fig-leafed") when shown to members, but not when shown to moderators/owners.
> If you then reply to a post and quote the original message, that
> quotation will contain whatever your email client put in the 'on such
> and such a date so and so wrote' bit,
As it turns out, email services vary considerably in how they preface such quotes in replies. Recognizing them is an on-going update item for Groups.io.
> and this seems to depend on whether the sender has defined a display
> name in their profile.
Email services are idiosyncratic about this. But generally yes, many will include only the "Display Name" portion of the From address, if there is one; some will include both Display Name and email address, a few will include only the email address.
> If there is no display name, groups.io shows the whole email address,
> not truncated in the same way as it does for replies via the website.
In email, and when viewed by moderators/owners on site, whatever the sender's service put into the message is shown. For members viewing on site Groups.io truncates the address (again with the exception of groups.io addresses).
> It seems to me that a possible improvement would be for groups.io to
> assume a display name of the first part of the email address for
> posters who haven't explicitly defined a display name.
Again, if you're talking about the preface to a quote, that comes from the sending member's email service.
Otherwise that's pretty much what Groups.io already does: the truncated address ("user@...") is shown in place of the Display Name.
> Not sure what can be done about the full email address not being
> visible in the email client, whilst staying compliant with the
> standards.
Yes, it would be possible. As you noted, Yahoo Groups' "hide" feature is one example implementation; a feature which is available to members of GMF's sister Yahoo! group.
Several approaches to this have been discussed in beta@, but nothing has come of it so far. If you're curious, I think "anonymous" would be a good search word, as in groups with anonymous members.
Shal
--
Cecil - k5nwa
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Shal (and others who responded, for which thanks) I think what concerns me here is that on the one hand, there is this distinction between the member directory and member list (which of course was the starting point for this thread), and you made the point, Shal, that 'I suspect most groups would restrict this list to moderators for privacy reasons'; on the other hand, this is completely blown out of the water by the fact that everyone who receives posts by email can see every poster's email address (admittedly they can't browse through the list but that's rather beside the point). Now personally I have no problem with people knowing my email address (and indeed I use the same email address for all my online memberships, and I always use my real name everywhere - except Github which was a historical accident). And I think a group should be able to allow its members to see email address information if that's what the group wants, as in Sarah's case. But where members want their email address privacy respected, it seems disingenuous to merely make the member list inaccessible when anyone who is an email-based user can see the originator's address in every post received. What's more, non-email based users probably assume that their address is indeed properly private because they never see full email addresses as a result of the fig-leafing. I realise that when an email-based user replies, it's their email client that generates the preface to a quoted message, but what it generates is based entirely on what's in the headers of the message being replied to. Thus for this reply, Outlook generated ' From: [email protected] [mailto: [email protected]] On Behalf Of Shal Farley', but had you not had a display name it would have inserted your email address. But the thing is, there is really no reason for your email address to have been included in the message headers in the first place, since it's not required for the message to be delivered to me. For example, the 'From:' header could say From: "Shal Farley" < [email protected] > rather than including your email address; and for john.doe@... who doesn't have a display name it could say From: "john.doe@" < [email protected] > This wouldn't affect delivery of the message but would obviate the need for the sender's email address to ever be visible to recipients. It could then be a group policy decision or perhaps individual option whether to use this scheme or stick with the current approach. Of course there may be other considerations that would make such a proposal unfeasible (for example the SMTP RFCs may specify that the original headers must be preserved exactly when a message is distributed to a mailing list, which is why I mentioned standards in my earlier post), and if that's the way it is then there's really nothing further that can be done. But I'm hoping that something along these lines might be possible. By the way, I only dragged this whole issue up again because a member of one of my groups was complaining when another member who responded to one of his posts addressed him using the 'fig leaf' rather than his display name, after which he cottoned on to the fact that his email address was visible to all email-based members - he had thought no-one could see it at all. I think I might put an explicit statement in my groups' descriptions and welcome messages that brings attention to this situation. Richard
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I don't think what you say is entirely true.
Before I moved my groups from Yahoo, there were many instances of members who had no declared email address at all, but were perfectly able to post.
This was occasionally a problem, especially in the case of a couple of rather abusive members whom I wanted to send private warnings to (I don't like publicly shaming people), but there was no way to contact them. In fact one of my groups had 33,000 members when it was at Yahoo, but only 7,000 were transferred to groups.io, and I could only assume that the others were all anonymous members with no declared email address.
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-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto: [email protected]] On Behalf Of Cecil Bayona Sent: 20 November 2017 17:59 To: [email protected]Subject: Re: [GMF] Member list vs. member directory This has been an issue on Yahoo groups, with some individuals getting all upset when someone ask them for their email address, they were not aware that if one used an email client everyone's email address was totally exposed. Privacy is only there in the mind of some on the Internet, the reality is if you use the Internet someone knows who you are and where you have been unless you take actions to maintain privacy beyond the average users knowledge.
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Richard, ... on the other hand, this is completely blown out of the water by
the fact that everyone who receives posts by email can see every
poster's email address ... That's basically in the nature of email lists (as opposed to online fora). There are ways around it, but most email lists operate with the sender's From: address forwarded in the clear. The theory behind the truncation on the web site is that a spammer can't just join a group and scrape everyone's email addresses out of the archive. They would have to lurk and receive messages for some time - and historically spammers haven't shown that kind of patience. Having members' email addresses in each other's mail folders, and possibly address books, does represent some vulnerability to compromised email accounts, but generally this has been seen as a much lower probability of exposure than just scraping them out of the group's site. But the thing is, there is really no reason for your email address to
have been included in the message headers in the first place, since
it's not required for the message to be delivered to me. That's true. And as I mentioned in my prior reply a variety of proposals for how Groups.io might handle this have been discussed in beta@ in the past. But for now Groups.io operates within the tradition of email lists, which makes sense given Groups.io's origins. Of course there may be other considerations that would make such a
proposal unfeasible (for example the SMTP RFCs may specify that the
original headers must be preserved exactly when a message is
distributed to a mailing list, ... I don't think there's anything to prohibit a service like Groups.io generating the outbound messages with completely replaced headers, as if the message originated at Groups.io - basically making messages posted by email equivalent to those posted on site. Yahoo Groups' feature to allow members to hide their email address does this in a rather direct (and unnecessarily draconian) way: members who choose to hide cannot post by email, they must post on site. That's one of the reasons I don't use that feature myself. I think I might put an explicit statement in my groups' descriptions
and welcome messages that brings attention to this situation. That's probably a good idea, especially if your group members largely haven't participated in conventional email lists, or Yahoo Groups which do not allow members the ability to hide (my impression is that the overwhelming majority do not allow it - it isn't the default). Shal
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Richard, ... one of my groups had 33,000 members when it was at Yahoo, but only
7,000 were transferred to groups.io, and I could only assume that the
others were all anonymous members with no declared email address. Or members on bouncing status. Those too do not transfer over. Shal
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J, Speaking of the truncation (aka fig-leafing), Mark has promised
repeatedly that this will be made optional per group (I don't want it
in my group). You can turn it off in your group if you don't mind allowing members to see the Members list. I've done that in my classmate groups. I think that's relatively safe on groups with restricted (and carefully vetted) membership. In doing that one does run the risk of accidentally approving a member who turns out to be a malcontent, spammer or even a crook; who then takes a copy of the members list. Use your own best judgement for this decision. Shal
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Shal
I understand everything you say, and where you're coming from, but as things stand I really don't think the distinction between the member list and the directory can be considered a privacy feature.
I also don't accept that other email-based lists' inability to hide members' email addresses from email recipients is any reason why groups.io shouldn't do better if it can. Many list servers are donkeys years old, from a different world where people were much less concerned about privacy invasion, identity theft and so on. I would suggest that in this era, anything that can (cost effectively) be done to reduce unnecessary leakage of personal information is worth considering. I wish I could say that users who are concerned about this are worried about nothing, but I can't justify such a position.
Anyway, I've made my point and clearly it's not one that seems to carry much weight, so I'm happy just to leave it at that rather than continue to debate this. But it will continue to niggle me...
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-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto: [email protected]] On Behalf Of Shal Farley Sent: 20 November 2017 19:43 To: [email protected]Subject: Re: [GMF] Member list vs. member directory Richard, > ... on the other hand, this is completely blown out of the water by > the fact that everyone who receives posts by email can see every > poster's email address ... That's basically in the nature of email lists (as opposed to online fora). There are ways around it, but most email lists operate with the sender's From: address forwarded in the clear. The theory behind the truncation on the web site is that a spammer can't just join a group and scrape everyone's email addresses out of the archive. They would have to lurk and receive messages for some time - and historically spammers haven't shown that kind of patience. Having members' email addresses in each other's mail folders, and possibly address books, does represent some vulnerability to compromised email accounts, but generally this has been seen as a much lower probability of exposure than just scraping them out of the group's site. > But the thing is, there is really no reason for your email address to > have been included in the message headers in the first place, since > it's not required for the message to be delivered to me. That's true. And as I mentioned in my prior reply a variety of proposals for how Groups.io might handle this have been discussed in beta@ in the past. But for now Groups.io operates within the tradition of email lists, which makes sense given Groups.io's origins. > Of course there may be other considerations that would make such a > proposal unfeasible (for example the SMTP RFCs may specify that the > original headers must be preserved exactly when a message is > distributed to a mailing list, ... I don't think there's anything to prohibit a service like Groups.io generating the outbound messages with completely replaced headers, as if the message originated at Groups.io - basically making messages posted by email equivalent to those posted on site. Yahoo Groups' feature to allow members to hide their email address does this in a rather direct (and unnecessarily draconian) way: members who choose to hide cannot post by email, they must post on site. That's one of the reasons I don't use that feature myself. > I think I might put an explicit statement in my groups' descriptions > and welcome messages that brings attention to this situation. That's probably a good idea, especially if your group members largely haven't participated in conventional email lists, or Yahoo Groups which do not allow members the ability to hide (my impression is that the overwhelming majority do not allow it - it isn't the default). Shal
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Richard, I understand everything you say, and where you're coming from, but as
things stand I really don't think the distinction between the member
list and the directory can be considered a privacy feature. I don't think it is, primarily. I think the two features come from different needs. The Members list comes about from the list admin's need to have a comprehensive list of the membership, with access to information about the members and controls for their subscription. That it can be shown to members is a bonus. The Members Directory comes about from a request that members be allowed to share profile information with one another. Another distinction between them is that when a member views the Directory, the member does not necessarily see a list of all other members - only those who've chosen no share at least some profile info are shown. I also don't accept that other email-based lists' inability to hide
members' email addresses from email recipients is any reason why
groups.io shouldn't do better if it can. I agree with you, and have done what I can to move the idea forward. ... so I'm happy just to leave it at that rather than continue to
debate this. But it will continue to niggle me... Hey, those niggling thoughts are sometimes where great ideas come from. I say nurture them. It might not hurt to bump this topic over in the beta@ group with a fresh perspective. Not that Mark doesn't have plenty on his plate already. ;-) Shal
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Shal Sorry, I didn't intend to add any more to this topic but I just want to clarify something that was a misunderstanding on my part. I am (and always was) perfectly happy with the distinction between the member list and the member directory, and with the fig-leafing of email addresses. But one thing that caught my attention was your statement in message #2626 that the Member list includes member's subscription information, and in particular shows their email addresses.
I suspect most groups would restrict this list to moderators for privacy reasons. On initial reading this seemed to me to be an overstatement, but re-reading it, I realise that you're not suggesting that the distinction between the lists is a privacy feature per se, but simply that not making the member list accessible to all is a useful privacy practice in many groups, which I entirely agree with. Just for the record, I'll add my wish list of things I'd like to see in groups.io related to this thread: 1. Members to be able to state in their profile that they wish to remain anonymous, meaning that other members (even moderators and owners) cannot discover their email address by any means. [I realise of course that there will always be some people who have complete access to everything, particularly those who run and maintain the databases, but they are not normal members and one has to presume that they are trustworthy.] 2. A group-level policy option that all members are to remain anonymous in this way. 3. A means for members to contact other members privately without needing to know their email address. 4. A means for members to declare that they do not want to be contacted privately under any circumstances. 5. Overriding 4, a means for moderators to contact members regardless of their preference, again without needing to know the member's email address. Having said that, with 40+ years of professional software development under my belt, I'm well aware of the difficulties of keeping a very large and diverse user base happy and prioritising their enhancement requests, and also of the effort involved in such developments. I have to say Mark and his team have done a brilliant job so far (I presume he does have at least a small team? If not I'm even more impressed!). Richard
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On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 05:00 am, Richard L King wrote:
I'll add my wish list of things I'd like to see in groups.io related to this thread:
I think this is so comprehensive and straightforward that you should repeat this wishlist to the beta group, which is the place for new feature suggestions. Some of these have been discussed there ad infinitum and some are even on the Trello todo list. If you do that, I (and probably others) will comment there on the individual items. For example, #4 is something I broached long ago and I believe is on the Todo list. A version of #1 (which was going by the name of "Private Groups" for awhile in the beta group - you can search on it) was also discussed ad infinitum, and Mark was even working on implementing it as an option for enterprise groups at one point (except for the option for group owners not to have access to the info - doubt you would get very many takers there). Etc. ? -- J
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Ok thanks, I¡¯ve done that. ?
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From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of J_Catlady
Sent: 21 November 2017 15:51
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [GMF] Member list vs. member directory? On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 05:00 am, Richard L King wrote: I'll add my wish list of things I'd like to see in groups.io related to this thread:
I think this is so comprehensive and straightforward that you should repeat this wishlist to the beta group, which is the place for new feature suggestions. Some of these have been discussed there ad infinitum and some are even on the Trello todo list. If you do that, I (and probably others) will comment there on the individual items. For example, #4 is something I broached long ago and I believe is on the Todo list. A version of #1 (which was going by the name of "Private Groups" for awhile in the beta group - you can search on it) was also discussed ad infinitum, and Mark was even working on implementing it as an option for enterprise groups at one point (except for the option for group owners not to have access to the info - doubt you would get very many takers there). Etc.
?
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J
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Hi J Can I ask what 'fig-leafing' is ? I think that it is when email address appear?? address@... if this is true please yes can I too have this as an option that I can disable. I have ahd a lot of complaints about this. Rosswell
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Duane
Shal Farley
Sarah k Alawami
rosswell gmail
Bruce