Something very strange just happened. I was reviewing the membership list when I noticed a member I had never approved. His membership record said he had joined at 8:06 pm CST. I noticed him at 8:30 pm. I kicked him out once I was certain he didn't belong in my group (membership requires approval, and this guy was never approved). Here are two screenshots.
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Notice that there are no log entries showing when this guy joined my group. I keep careful track of my group's membership. There are currently 1,016 approved members in my group, and I can account for every one of them (offline records that I maintain). This guy was member #1,017 for about 20 minutes or so. How did he sneak in? Should I file a bug report?
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David Bryant
Canyon Lake, Texas
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On Thu, Jan 7, 2021 at 10:06 PM, David Bryant wrote:

His membership record said he had joined at 8:06 pm CST.

I don't see that in your screenshots.

I noticed him at 8:30 pm. I kicked him out once I was certain he didn't belong in my group (membership requires approval, and this guy was never approved). Here are two screenshots.

I'm rather befuddled as well. A few thoughts:
-- Those who transferred from a Yahoo group using the Easy Group Transfer mechanism will have no join entry in their activity log.
-- Could you (or a co-Owner) have accidentally changed group settings for awhile, thus allowing him to join without review?
-- Could you (or a co-Owner) have invited this person? Accepted invitations do not go into Pending status.
-- Could this person have joined under a different email address, and subsequently changed it themselves (or had a co-Owner change it)? To my knowledge, changing an account's email address -- or merging it with another -- does not generate a group log entry.
-- Generally, I've found the string search function in the activity log to be less than reliable. If you have a Premium group, you may have better luck looking at this person's log entries in your Past Members list (click on the Removed link to see it).

Some obscure combination of the above could perhaps cause what you've seen.?

Hope this helps,
Bruce

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

Thank you, Bruce. I didn't think to start taking screenshots until I had deleted the guy.

I figured it out. I have created a couple of subgroups. One of the moderators in a subgroup is a bit thoughtless, and sent an invitation (to join the subgroup) without my knowledge or consent.So the other log entries are in the log for the subgroup, but the master membership record was added to the main group.

I think I'll make a suggestion to Mark, that when members are added to the main group because of activity originating within a subgroup, an entry should also be made in the main group's actvity log. When I thought to look at the subgroup I saw what had happpened pretty quickly. But I also saw that the member's deletion (by me) had not been logged in the subgroup's activity. That's also a little confusing.
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David Bryant
Canyon Lake, Texas
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I have created a couple of subgroups. One of the moderators in a subgroup is a bit thoughtless, and sent an invitation (to join the subgroup) without my knowledge or consent

Hmm ... interestingly enough there was another instance recently (/g/GroupManagersForum/message/36192) where the same root problem, a subgroup mod inviting a member when they shouldn't be able to (if the main group admin didn't want them to), caused an unintended issue downstream.

I proposed a few solutions in that topic, the quick and easy "in subgroups, hide/disable the Invite option for all but the owners" solution would prevent stuff like this from happening.

Cheers,
Christos

On Fri, Jan 8, 2021 at 02:10 AM, Christos G. Psarras wrote:

I proposed a few solutions in that topic, the quick and easy "in subgroups, hide/disable the Invite option for all but the owners" solution would prevent stuff like this from happening.

Actually, I specifically permitted this particular moderator to invite new members. I did ask her to let me know when she did that, but apparently she forgot.

I think adding additional log entries is probably a better approach than restricting a moderator's privileges. I don't really monitor stuff in the subgroups very closely, to the extent it's separate from the main group. They're specialists, with particular concerns. When yahoo was operational, they were entirely separate from my group. I took them under my wing when the leaders of those once-separate groups came looking for advice / help about a year ago. This is really a relatively small headache.
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David Bryant
Canyon Lake, Texas
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A Moderator Notification of "Invitation(s) Sent" would be a good feature.