On Wed, Oct 3, 2018 at 05:38 PM, Patty Sliney wrote:

I'd prefer this policy be completely changed

Unless you can convince all the services that use FBL to get rid of it, there's not much else that can be done on the GIO end.

Duane
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Thank you Duane, for posting my suggestion to extend the restore time over on the Beta list.? Saw that, appreciate it.? I'd prefer this policy be completely changed, and not be so harsh, but at least this is a step in the right direction.

Patty Sliney

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Patty S.

On Fri, Sep 28, 2018 at 10:14 AM, Patty Sliney wrote:

it's possible that the unsubbed list member will miss out on that 3 day window they have, to restore themselves.? That window should be set to 7 days.

Mark has just extended this to 7 days:


Duane
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Jim,

Yes... and to that I'd add that Yahoo.com isn't an ISP so anyone using
them for email delivery also has another option for email delivery at
the ISP they pay for Internet access.

It isn't always that straightforward. In recent years many ISPs have farmed out their email service to Yahoo, MSN, Google or other major mailbox providers, rather than run their own mailservers.

In fact, my current ISP doesn't offer email services at all. That's the primary reason I'm using Gmail at present - previously I'd been using the service that came with my ISP, but in my last switch I had to go find an independent mailbox provider.

That said, your point is valid: there are still several choices out there for mailbox service, despite all the consolidation in the industry.

A call to their ISP's Tech Support should tell them if that ISP uses
FBL and whether there's a setting to bypass all filtering and accept
all mail.

I tried that long ago to no avail - my ISP would not admit to having any filtering, yet I had pretty clear evidence of at least greylisting and sometimes outright rejecting my Yahoo Group messages. But then, it was Verizon DSL (back when they ran their own mailservers).

Shal


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Received from Bob Cook at 9/30/2018 01:31 PM UTC:

If you think you are going to "educate" these people, you are TOTALLY WRONG. They don't need to be a mechanic to drive their car. They should not have to learn to do something (every month or week!) to use groups.io. They have no idea how to access their spam folder or successfully move a message out of the spam/trash folder.

They don't have to be a full fledged mechanic to drive a car, but they darn sure need to know to change their oil and check fluid levels and tire pressure periodically - or pay someone else to do this on a reasonable schedule - if they want that car to keep running. One of the first things I did after my son got his driver's license... before he was let loose alone with the car... was to teach him how to change a tire.

And to continue with the car analogy, many (if not most) younger people can't drive a stick shift and would be thoroughly frustrated if pushed to learn. But I bet their grandfather can drive one and took the learning of it in stride at the time.

It really isn't that hard to find a JUNK folder and once there marking a message as "Not spam" is trivial. It **IS** hard to do if anger is allowed to override reason. In my experience the members who have the most problems dealing with problems are the one who are most angry about the problem. I tell them to lose the attitude and I'll be glad to help them. Abuse me and they're on their own.

Also in my experience, those who are concerned about "old people" (etc) are underrating most of their older members. And for those oldsters (infirm , etc) who really need outside help there's one of their children, grandchildren, perhaps even great grandchildren, or even the high school kid next door. I've pointed to those potential sources of help for those I couldn't help via email... with very good success.

Some people don't adapt well to change, but they will if they have no other choice AND if shown how at the same time.

Coming from years on Yahoo, this policy is a HUGE step backwards for my group.

Yahoo is not only too big to block, but they don't deal adequately with spammers operating from Yahoo Stores because they know they're too big to block. Groups.io isn't too big to block so they unsubscribe people who flag their messages as spam in order to avoid a bad reputation that will get even more of their mail blocked. It's a matter of survival. For me it's not even a matter of opinion which approach is more "backward."

Jim H

Received from Patty Sliney via Groups.Io at 9/29/2018 03:16 PM UTC:

And, we also include how to manage their Junk/Spam folders moving forward (teaching "old dogs new tricks" sort of thing.) I've gotten pushback from some of my list members about that last piece of advice. Our reply to them is: If you continue to just randomly empty your Junk/Spam folder without restoring authentic emails as "Not Spam", then you're going to be continually unsubbed from Groups.io, if there are emails from the same in your Junk/Spam folder. Bad Form. Not Best Practice. And perhaps our list is not the best place for you, then.

Harsh, but if someone isn't willing to make a small change in how they manage their email, nothing we can do about that.

A bit harsh sounding ONLY because it's missing the "why" part of why Gio does this. In my opinion that message above needs to be given exactly as straightforward as above... plus why. Then it needs to be read for comprehension and heeded... and then ignored at one's own peril. Refusing to recognize it as a currently inescapable reality and instead insist that Gio abandon its unsubscribed for marking as spam policy risks the future of Groups.io.

And, for what it's worth, for my lists, the most common email service unsubbed folks use are in order: @yahoo.com and @aol.com

Tho very few forced unsubs here, same experience in that Yahoo and AOL constitute most of them.

Yahoo is a web portal, not an ISP (OK so it IS an ISP, but under the SBC domain name). Folks using Yahoo.com as a delivery point for email have another email delivery option thru their own ISP. That's the option I recommend to my subscribers who are having problems with email at Yahoo. AOL and Yahoo are both marketed by Oath, which is a subsidiary of Verizon. It shouldn't come as a huge surprise that they share some of the same issues.

Jim H

Received from Duane at 9/30/2018 03:15 PM UTC:

On Sun, Sep 30, 2018 at 09:34 AM, Bob Cook wrote:
Coming from years on Yahoo, this policy is a HUGE step backwards for my group.

I think it's rather ironic that Yahoo is one of the main enforcers of the FBL policy when it comes to receiving emails, but don't seem to honor it when sending them. Until the FBL goes away, if ever, sites like Groups.io will need to honor it or face blacklisting from email services. It's also unnerving that Yahoo (and others) will decide that an email is spam, them use their seemingly arbitrary decision to send anything from that source to the spam folder. The main alternatives for now are to get folks to check for (possibly mislabeled) spam or change email providers to one that doesn't use FBL. Neither is a simple operation, but both work very well in most cases.

Yes... and to that I'd add that Yahoo.com isn't an ISP so anyone using them for email delivery also has another option for email delivery at the ISP they pay for Internet access. A call to their ISP's Tech Support should tell them if that ISP uses FBL and whether there's a setting to bypass all filtering and accept all mail.

Jim H

Received from Gerald Boutin at 9/29/2018 06:17 AM UTC:

For example, it is very common practice on commercial websites that are trying to sell a product or service to require your contact information in order to obtain access to free services and information. The welcome email always seems to include the "please add our email address to your white-list". Note that this is done up front before they start spamming me.

That "please add our email address..." message should be a warning that their emailing reputation is - fairly or unfairly - not so good. This is precisely why I maintain several email addresses on Yahoo... addresses I use only when I absolutely must give an email address to someone I don't want to have my real email address. I'd give Yahoo's email filters a score of 9.9 out of 10 for effectiveness. Later on, if I unsubscribe and the unsubscription request isn't honored, I mark the next message as spam and Yahoo's filter takes care of them. I highly recommend this approach for use with sites you really don't want to have your main email address. And don't let the name "Yahoo" scare you. YahooGroups stinks on ice, but email is handled quite well.

Jim H

Tony,

Is it not possible to see if it was the ISP marked the message as
spam? _or_if it was the Subscriber?

The information provided in FBL reports apparently varies with different email services. Mark has said that the ones causing this trouble do not provide any detail on why the message was reported.

I once suggested he use a heuristic to distinguish this: look at the delay from message delivery to it appearing in an FBL report. If the delay is on the order of 30 days or more then likely the message was auto-deleted from a spam folder. If it is relatively prompt (a day or two) it is likely the user marking it spam.

Mark was skeptical of this, noting that the email services tend to run their FBL reports in batches, so the timing would be suspect in either case. I don't know if he ever looked into the statistics to see if there would be a chance of making that work.

Simultaneously Groups.io tell the subscriber, if if possible, that
their ISP is denying delivery of emails they have subscribed for.

Delivery isn't being denied (that would be a "Bounce", aka message rejection). Rather delivery is being diverted to the member's spam folder.

Shal


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开云体育

Coming from years on Yahoo, this policy is a HUGE step backwards for my group.

I think it's rather ironic that Yahoo is one of the main enforcers of the FBL policy when it comes

Duane,

I think it's rather ironic that Yahoo is one of the main enforcers of
the FBL policy when it comes to receiving emails, but don't seem to
honor it when sending them.

I think that if there were still any development going on at Yahoo Groups then the Yahoo Mail team would by now have forced Groups to deal with Y!Mail's FBL.

I can't be certain what Y!Groups would have done about it, but they'd have to do something or else continue with the status-quo: Y!Groups' messages landing in the Spam folder or being rejected.

Shal


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Bob,

They have no idea how to access their spam folder or successfully move
a message out of the spam/trash folder.

Then it behooves them to choose an email service with an exceptionally accurate spam filter. As Bill said, it is likely that they'll miss other important messages, not just those from your group, that went to their spam folder.

They don’t need to be a mechanic to drive their car.

No, but they do need to know where the steering wheel, turn signals, parking brake, and other vital controls are. In email systems being aware of the Spam folder and its contents is vital - unless your use a service with a mythical "perfect" filter.

Coming from years on Yahoo, this policy is a HUGE step backwards for
my group.

And the flip side is that one of the most common complaints about Yahoo Groups is the delays and non-delivery of messages. That's probably not entirely a coincidence - even Yahoo Mail has been cited as frequently putting Yahoo Group messages into the spam folder.

Shal


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On Sun, Sep 30, 2018 at 09:34 AM, Bob Cook wrote:

Coming from years on Yahoo, this policy is a HUGE step backwards for my group.

I think it's rather ironic that Yahoo is one of the main enforcers of the FBL policy when it comes to receiving emails, but don't seem to honor it when sending them.? Until the FBL goes away, if ever, sites like Groups.io will need to honor it or face blacklisting from email services.? It's also unnerving that Yahoo (and others) will decide that an email is spam, them use their seemingly arbitrary decision to send anything from that source to the spam folder.? The main alternatives for now are to get folks to check for (possibly mislabeled) spam or change email providers to one that doesn't use FBL.? Neither is a simple operation, but both work very well in most cases.

Duane
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Samuel,

Moderators get a notice:
"Subscriber was removed for marking a message as spam"

Can you tell me where I can find those settings?

The "Email when a member joins/leaves this group" checkbox is in the Notifications section on each mod/owner's Subscription page. Also their page you can access through the Members list.

Shal


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On 2018/09/30 03:17 AM, Shal Farley wrote:

Moderators get a notice:
"Subscriber was removed for marking a message as spam"

Can you tell me where I can find those settings? I checked the "Admin" menu on the /settings page but can't seem to see it.

Samuel

Samuel,

Well, my opinion (which I think is shared by some others here) is that
"informing the member" should be a two-pronged approach: ...
and inform the moderator ...

That is already done.

Moderators get a notice:
"Subscriber was removed for marking a message as spam"

(That's assuming the moderator opted in for notices of members leaving and joining.)

Since some users also use the web interface, an idea might be to put
up a large notification there informing the user that there is
something about his subscription that requires attention.

That is done for Bounce status, I don't know about unsubscribed for spam.

For this to work, the user would have to be suspended, not
unsubscribed.

It could work either way. When the person logs in the system would know who they are, and must have a record of them being "unsubscribed for spam" - else I don't believe the resume link that is sent by email could work.

Shal


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On 9/29/2018 11:16 AM, Patty Sliney via Groups.Io wrote:

And, we also include how to manage their Junk/Spam folders moving
forward (teaching "old dogs new tricks" sort of thing.)? I've gotten
pushback from some of my list members about that last piece of advice.
Our reply to them is:? If you continue to just randomly empty your
Junk/Spam folder without restoring authentic emails as "Not Spam", then
you're going to be continually unsubbed from Groups.io, if there are
emails from the same in your Junk/Spam folder.

They are also going to delete a good number of other emails they
probably don't want to lose. I've been using one of my email addresses
everywhere on line for over twenty years, and I get a lot of spam which
ends up in my spam folder. I check it every day, and two or three times
a week there are false positives.

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Bill

Samuel, from my perspective, the only way to notify a list member who's been unsubbed, is to do that via a list mod's private email address, so you can have more assurance they'll actually get notified they've been unsubbed, since trying to get restored is time-sensitive (3-day window to use that Restore link, in the auto Restore Groups.io email).? For what it's worth, I have required all my list mods to check off in their list Subscription section, "Email when a member joins/leaves this group" option, so they get notified of list members unsubscribed due to marking a list message as spam.? If they get that notification, they are to send that list member an email from their private email address notifying them of this.? Here is the boilerplate language we us in that email:


This has worked pretty well for us.? We get maybe about a 50-75% response rate.? Some are able to make that 3-day window to restore themselves, others have to resubscribe.? Just a lot of work of list mods, that I really wish we didn't have to do.

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Patty S.

Ok, but your thesis is that many times the members don't receive (or don't notice) the resume notice. How does Groups.io "serve up" some list member education without it also ending up in spam?

You're right.? All/most Groups.io message would continue to go into the Spam folder until that member told their email program/ISP Groups.io emails are NOT Spam (by going into their Spam folder, and marking any Groups.io emails as "Not Spam", restoring those emails to that person's Inbox.)?

No solution available via Groups.io.? I still hate this feature.? So the onus is on the List Mods/Owners to send private emails to those unsubbed list members as we're currently doing, to let them know they were unsubbed.? Why they were unsubbed, and how to restore themselves.? And, we also include how to manage their Junk/Spam folders moving forward (teaching "old dogs new tricks" sort of thing.)? I've gotten pushback from some of my list members about that last piece of advice.? Our reply to them is:? If you continue to just randomly empty your Junk/Spam folder without restoring authentic emails as "Not Spam", then you're going to be continually unsubbed from Groups.io, if there are emails from the same in your Junk/Spam folder.? Bad Form.? Not Best Practice.? And perhaps our list is not the best place for you, then.? Harsh, but if someone isn't willing to make a small change in how they manage their email, nothing we can do about that. ?
2!
And, for what it's worth, for my lists, the most common email service unsubbed folks use are in order:? @yahoo.com and @aol.com
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Patty S.