Ok, so I'm minding my own business (I'm the owner of the site), and I see an email that hits my box that says...

"This is to notify you that?XXXX?has been unsubscribed from your group?[email protected]?because they marked a message as spam."

I do absolutely nothing.

Then a few hours later, I get...

"This is to notify you that XXXXXX?has rejoined your group?[email protected]."

Can someone explain to me what the heck happened to generate [both] those messages????

Thanks!

The first part is self-explanatory - they (or their email service) marked a message as spam and cleared the spam folder.? The second is because when that happens an email is sent to them from groups.io explaining what happened, including a link to correct it.? There are several threads here recently about this very thing.

Duane
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I am a Moderator for the wireless-set-no19 Group, (as well as a member of other Groups) and we have been plagued by this problem since migrating from Yahoo just over 3 months ago. I have just signed up to this Forum after finding comments like There have been, like, hundreds of conversations about this here and There are several threads here recently about this very thing.

It is thus a common and (I assume) annoying problem, so is there any likelihood of anything about it turning up in the "Help" section? There is nothing to prewarn members or Moderators at all, and it was only following a surprise "dismemberment" from a long - standing and reliable member that we have been able to try to work out what has been going on. It has also revealed why some members thus affected have rejoined without any action on our part; Owners and Moderators have no clue about what processes are in place without delving into this Forum, and it is only by luck that a suitable thread was on the front page. How many threads are Mods expected to search in the hope of finding a relevant one? Even the warning notice to Mods that someone has left is misleading, reading "because they marked a message as spam" when in fact the member concerned had done nothing at all; the message has been marked as spam somewhere along the route and the person concerned had no knowledge of it.?

In today's instance the person concerned did not know that a message had been spam - boxed by his ISP until I contacted him, and had up to that point had avoided the "do you want to rejoin" link because of a deep distrust of uninvited links, which is entirely reasonable.?

If the "auto - deletion" policy is to remain in place can there at least be some help in the "help" section? If threads are common on this Forum then it ought to be obvious that it is a recurrent problem. ?

And yes I apologise if this reads like a bit of a rant, but the above has been a cause for concern right from the outset.

Chris

Chris,

It is thus a common and (I assume) annoying problem, so is there any
likelihood of anything about it turning up in the "Help" section?

I can't speak to what turns up in the Help section (well, I could poke at Mark but he's got a lot on his plate). In the shorter term, an article in GMF's wiki would be a great idea.

If someone would write it. Doesn't have to be neat, it could even start as little more than a list of links to relevant message posts.

Even the warning notice to Mods that someone has left is misleading,
reading "/because they marked a message as spam/" when in fact the
member concerned had done nothing at all; the message has been marked
as spam somewhere along the route and the person concerned had /no/
knowledge of it.

If you can come up with better wording, the beta group would be a good place to put it in front of Mark. He's far more apt to copy/paste something well written than he is to try and write something from scratch.

If the "auto - deletion" policy is to remain in place can there at
least be some help in the "help" section?

The same is true of the Help pages, and that is the origin of the Help Page Mock-up in GMF's Wiki. If you/we write it, Mark might take it up.


The policy most likely will stay in place, for a time. That's because certain email services (AOL, Yahoo, and MSN among them) have created the whole FBL (Feedback Loop) mechanism for this purpose. It is beyond me why any of those email services (I'm looking at you, AOL) think it is a good idea to report a user when it was their own filter that put the list's message(s) into the Spam folder.

There is a replacement RFC (proposed standard) for a "One-click" unsubscribe feature to implemented cooperatively by email services and list services. So things may change. But I've a fear that the same benighted email services that build over-active FBLs will do something equivalently stupid in their implementation of one-click.

And yes I apologise if this reads like a bit of a rant, but the above
has been a cause for concern right from the outset.

No apology needed. Mark isn't here to be offended, and the rest of us have much the same concern.

Shal


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Shal; thanks for the prompt response.

Chris,

That reads suspiciously like "why don't you (i.e. me!) write
something", which is fair enough; I don't much like "somebody /else/
should do something" attitudes myself!

Glad you understand. Since this is an all-volunteer effort the more people I can convince to volunteer some effort the better the result can be.

One snag I can see is that if this case is typical the member
concerned did not see the message that had been spuriously marked as
spam, and it is not impossible that the deletion notification was also
shunted into his spam box.

That's an unfortunate problem. I'm not sure what Groups.io can do about it (other than encourage people not to use such email services).

Groups.io /knows/ that it is not originating spam, so why is it
allowing others (e.g. aol) to determine that it is?

"Allowing"? The member's email service makes that determination on its own - Groups.io would love to be able to persuade them otherwise.

From my perspective (which I have to accept is less than complete) a
simple solution is to break the feedback loop and for Groups.io to
ignore others marking messages as spam.

There seems to be an implied stick to the FBL contract: unsubscribe this user or we (the email service) will dump more/all email messages from your list service into our users' Spam folders. Or outright reject them. Doubtless it isn't as black and white as that. I more suspect that compliance is simply fed in as another factor in the email system's Spam/Ham discriminator function.

Unfortunately Mark's perspective is less than complete as well. I'm not too surprised - I can understand why email services might be wary about revealing details of how they determine which messages are spam.


(email)

Shal


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Many thanks for the "further and better particulars", including the betagroups.io links, which are very informative in showing that we are dealing with a well known problem to which there seems to be no immediately obvious solution.

I have also received a copy of the "dismemberment" email received by the person most recently affected. It reads as follows: (I have hidden his details.)

On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 06:00 am, Chris Jones wrote:

Now IMHO the above is misleading on two grounds; firstly it appears that it was sent by the individual Group itself (i.e. the owner or Moderators) when in fact it was not. I feel that the originator should be "Groups.io Management Team" or somesuch;

Obviously I can't be sure of Mark's thinking on this, but suspect that it shows as coming from the group to add a bit of authenticity, as well as someone to contact for assistance.? Keep in mind that when this happens, no email is sent to that address from any groups.io group in an effort to keep this site from being blacklisted.

secondly it reads Because your email service reported to us that you have marked one or more messages from wireless-set-[email protected] as spam when in fact this was simply not the case; it was the ISP (specifically aol) that marked the message as spam, not the member. Under those circumstances anyone receiving such a message would be perfectly entitled to treat it with the greatest of suspicion. It would be much better (again IMHO) if the sentence read something like

Because your Service Provider's email service reported to us that you have marked one or more messages from wireless-set-[email protected] has been marked as spam you have been automatically removed from the group. Please note that this "marking as spam" may have been done by your Service Provider and not by you. We suggest that you check your spam box as soon as possible to see if your Service Provider has diverted a perfectly legitimate message into it.

It's the actual Email Service Provider where they are being marked as spam, either by a filter or a user.? Many folks, including me, have an Internet Service Provider that is different from our ESP.? Because of that, I'd reword that part of the message as:

"Because your Email Service Provider reported to us that one or more messages from [GroupName]@groups.io has been marked as spam you have been automatically removed from the group.? Please note that this "marking as spam" may have been done by your Email Service Provider and not by you. We suggest that you check your spam box as soon as possible to see if your Email Service Provider has diverted legitimate messages into it."

Joining the beta group and posting this as a suggestion would get it in front of Mark where he would be more apt to change the wording of the message.

Duane
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On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 07:55 am, Duane wrote:

Obviously I can't be sure of Mark's thinking on this, but suspect that it shows as coming from the group to add a bit of authenticity, as well as someone to contact for assistance.?

I see the point you are making here, but would state that with the Help pages not providing any information about this "feature" a Group Owner & Moderators are not well placed to provide assistance without a great deal of delving along the lines I am pursuing, which would turn out to be a variant of reinventing the wheel.

It's the actual Email Service Provider where they are being marked as spam, either by a filter or a user.? Many folks, including me, have an Internet Service Provider that is different from our ESP.? Because of that, I'd reword that part of the message as:

"Because your Email Service Provider reported to us that one or more messages from [GroupName]@groups.io has been marked as spam you have been automatically removed from the group.? Please note that this "marking as spam" may have been done by your Email Service Provider and not by you. We suggest that you check your spam box as soon as possible to see if your Email Service Provider has diverted legitimate messages into it."

I agree fully with you on this point; I got halfway there by deliberately not saying "Internet Service Provider" but your suggestion of inserting "Email" makes perfect sense. It might be prudent to also insert (which might not be the same as your ISP) at a suitable location as well.

Joining the beta group and posting this as a suggestion would get it in front of Mark where he would be more apt to change the wording of the message.

OK you've convinced me. I'll do that and see what happens, not least because I don't want to try and prepare a "Help Note" which has to be changed soon thereafter because the notifications have been altered. (And yes; I have started!)

Regards,

Chris

Chris,

From: [email protected] <[email protected]>
...
Cheers,
The Groups.io Team

I see the mixed message there.

Like Duane, I suspect the From names the group admins in part to direct any reply there. It may also be the case that, despite group messages having gone to that member's spam folder, that the group-specific address may be more likely to be delivered to the member's Inbox than a generic groups.io address.

secondly it reads /Because your email service reported to us that you
have marked one or more messages from [email protected]
as spam/ when in fact this was simply not the case;

This may sound weaselly, but that likely is exactly the case. That is, it is what "your email service reported to us" - the fact that certain email services falsely report their own marking as if it were the user's action is the problem. Note in the Wikipedia article "... by which a mailbox provider (MP) forwards the complaints originating from their users ...".

Mark's out for this is "If this was a mistake ..." -- anyone's mistake. Because it is almost certainly the member's mistake some fraction of the time, the cases that get reported here notwithstanding.

That said, your rewrite of "you have marked" with "has been marked" is probably a good way to cover the ambiguity.

Shal


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开云体育

Hi,

I have to admit this thread has totally confused me.? But I did want to ask one really stupid question - why does Groups.io care if the messages from here are going to someone's spam folder?? Why unsubscribe them?? Why not just leave it, is there some negative effect to Groups.io of having messages go into someone's spam folder?? Again sorry if this has been covered, or if it is a dumb question.

Barb B

Shal; thanks for that. Anyway as you have probably spotted I have transferred this to the beta group so it is now simply a question of "wait and see".

I sincerely hope some alterations can be made to the notifications because IMHO it will reduce the confusion that arises and make managing the overall situation just a little bit easier for both Owners / Moderators and Members, particularly for any groups that migrate from Yahoo in the future. Groups.io is a much nicer platform than Yahoo and if it can be made better still then so much the better. By all accounts Yahoo was completely impossible to negotiate with over matters like this.

Chris

Barb B,

I have to admit this thread has totally confused me. But I did want
to ask one really stupid question - why does Groups.io care if the
messages from here are going to someone's spam folder?

It is not a stupid question. In fact it is one that Mark has struggled with.

Why not just leave it, is there some negative effect to Groups.io of
having messages go into someone's spam folder?

That's exactly right. The reason is a concern that if Groups.io were to continue sending messages to that address then the email service provider might "punish" Groups.io by (more frequently) relegating other members' messages to their spam boxes.

The key thing to remember is that this only happens because the member's email service provider went to the trouble to specifically notify Groups.io that the message(s) had been marked as spam. Other email services (such as Gmail) don't notify senders of such markings, so their users never get unsubscribed this way.

Shal


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开云体育

I was mystified about exactly the same thing. How does it know someone put the mail in a folder?

wunder,

I’m glad to help with a Wiki page on this. It certainly is a
frequently asked question.

Happy to have your help and Chris'. Here's a place to start:
/g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/Removed-for-spam

I didn't have time to put any thought into it yet, and I'll figure out where to link it on the wiki home page later. Or maybe it will fit into the Help page mockup. Nice thing about a wiki, it's easy to change your mind.

Shal


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OK I've put a first draft into the location linked above. I'm not entirely happy with it yet, but at least it's a step in the right direction. (I hope) I have deliberately not included copies of the emails currently sent out to members / Owner & Moderators in the hope that they might just be changed before too long.

While working on it I found myself wondering if a better response to a spam notification from an ESP might be to switch the member over to "web access only / no emails" rather than rather brutally cancelling their membership.The "restore" function could remain in place.

Chris

jeff,

I see under Admin->Settings->Member Notices that you can add text to a
notice called "Removed member". The default subject line seems to be
the same as the message in question.

Is this in fact the same notice?

No, it is not.

But that may be a good point. Perhaps the Subject text should be deliberately different to avoid confusion.

Shal


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On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 02:48 pm, Chris Jones wrote:

While working on it I found myself wondering if a better response to a spam notification from an ESP might be to switch the member over to "web access only / no emails" rather than rather brutally cancelling their membership. The "restore" function could remain in place.

Although a good idea on the face of it, some groups (like mine) have the "no email" option disabled, so it won't help us.

Bruce

P.S. Thanks for writing a first draft. I think we all could spend more of our time on something like that, rather than answering the same questions over and over again.