Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Groups.io [was How does your community handle internal communications?

[John Sechrest (sechrest]

For those of you with a gmail service, you might want to know about the
<MORE> button on the top right, which has a "mute" function for email
conversations. Which gives you a poor-man's version of mute thread in
groups.io



On Sun, Sep 18, 2016 at 11:12 PM, Beverly Jones Redekop <
beverly.jones.redekop [at] gmail.com> wrote:

>
> #7 sounds amazing!!!! That would solve most of the "too many messages"
> issues.
>
> "7. Each subscriber can mute a message thread. Like the recent gardening
> dispute or the nanny requests, one can select mute and not see any other
> messages in that thread. Your own groups page shows what threads you have
> muted."
>
> On Sun, Sep 18, 2016, 12:46 PM Sharon Villines <sharon [at] 
> sharonvillines.com>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > > On Sep 18, 2016, at 2:39 PM, Beverly Jones Redekop <
> > beverly.jones.redekop [at] gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > An hour away, at Groundswell Cohousing at Yarrow Ecovillage, we use a
> > > Google group email too. In the footer of each message is a link to the
> > > "cheat sheet" with links to everything (calendar, community dinner
> > > schedules, guidelines for using our wastewater system, members of
> > > committees, minutes, etc...). A lot of this will move to a new website
> or
> > > strata software "soon," but we've been using the Google group for seven
> > > years.
> >
> > A new platform for group communications is Groups.io. They just
> > transferred my ~3000 member neighborhood list from Yahoo without a hitch.
> > All settings remained the same. They also transferred the 12 years of
> > archives — the list now receives ~900 emails a month. They can’t transfer
> > files. We had watched YahooGroups decline in services and reliability for
> > years but exploration of Google resulted in the conclusion that it was
> not
> > much better and we couldn’t transfer easily.
> >
> > Groups.io also sent a message to each subscriber explaining the change
> and
> > only one person has asked me what the address of the new group was. 1 of
> > 3,000. I assume I will get more questions later from people who don’t
> read
> > or post often, but that was amazing. People love the new list. (I’m still
> > looking into transferring our cohousing lists.)
> >
> > I pasted in two messages below  that I sent to my list about why
> Groups.IO
> > was better
> >
> > ONE — THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF CHANGING
> >
> > Groups.io was recommended by a list member. I’ve been exploring it and am
> > considering moving the list there. It has many advantages:
> >
> > 1. They will transfer the whole list and our archives. I have assurances
> > from other groups that this has been done for their much larger lists
> > without a hitch. There are no storage limits except for files and
> > attachments. We don’t allow attachments and don’t use the files often.
> But
> > the limit on those is 1 GB.
> >
> > 2. The list works very much like YahooGroups with many more features.
> >
> > 3. People can sign up using only their name and email address — no
> account
> > set up. No email account. No phone number.
> >
> > 4. People can be automatically be removed from moderated status after a
> > set number of approved messages. This will be a great service to
> > moderators. (We moderate new members to prevent spam.)
> >
> > 5. We escape from the Yahoo mistake of making us a restricted group so
> new
> > members are automatically approved. Removes the appearance of being a
> > elitist list.
> >
> > 6. The list can have unlimited subgroups. An example is a travel list
> that
> > sets up subgroups for those who take specific trips or have visited
> > specific countries. Then the list members can find people who went on
> that
> > trip or that country or ask questions. Anyone on the main list can also
> > subscribe to subgroups.
> >
> > On TakomaDC people frequently have set up separate lists for children’s
> > issues, sales, crime, Metro Development. That would not be necessary they
> > could be subgroups of the main list.
> >
> > 7. Each subscriber can mute a message thread. Like the recent gardening
> > dispute or the nanny requests, one can select mute and not see any other
> > messages in that thread. Your own groups page shows what threads you have
> > muted.
> >
> > 8. For those who use #hashtags, they can be used in messages to make
> > searches for those messages are easier. I once tried to search for Takoma
> > Station Tavern, but it was impossible. There were too many messages for
> the
> > Takoma  Metro Station, Takoma gas station, etc. There were hundreds of
> > messages. #Takoma Station Tavern would have been possible to search. Of
> > course not everyone would use these, but … Hashtags that have been used
> are
> > available on the group’s webpage.
> >
> > 9. A Wiki. A wiki is an organized information resource like Maggie’s List
> > that all subscribers can update. If “all members” becomes a problem, a
> few
> > can be authorized to do this.
> >
> > 10. A calendar, where you can schedule events and send reminders. We
> > haven’t used this often but did use it one year when we had few trick or
> > treaters and wanted people to know where there would be treats.
> >
> > 11. A poll feature similar to what we have now.
> >
> > 12. A full featured database, where we can define tables with different
> > column types.
> >
> > 13. Photos and files sections.
> >
> > 14. A good business model. This ensures there will be no ads and that
> > features won’t be withdrawn because Yahoo has a new CEO The focus of
> Groups
> > IO is specifically making the best email list service available. For $10
> a
> > month more features are available including 10 GB of storage. It is
> > unlikely that we would need this but I think we could easily get
> > contributions from subscribers equal to $120 a year.
> >
> > More information:
> > https://groups.io/static/about
> >
> >
> > TWO-- WHY I TRUST THE CHANGE
> >
> > I’ve received questions off-list about why Groups.io better than
> > YahooGroups.com. If groups can be so clear and simple, why can’t
> > YahooGroups? You would think they would improve themselves the same way.
> >
> > The answer is that Yahoo is not focused on groups. No one knows what they
> > are focused on, but it isn’t groups. They do the least they can, and even
> > eliminate features, to retain enough group members to raise the most
> money
> > possible. If a feature makes users happy, but doesn’t increase income
> over
> > costs, it is eliminated. Does that hurt anyone? The day they summarily
> > deleted all attachments to messages? To 10 years of the history of an
> > organization?
> >
> > Groups.io isn’t a charity or volunteer organization either. Instead it
> has
> > a good business model that is focused on its key product. It offers free
> > services to groups to attract and develop the possibilities of groups. As
> > businesses and social groups become more developed and need more
> services,
> > they pay an affordable fee for those services: $10 a month. In time,
> there
> > will be more services, I’m sure, as the Groups.io founder, the staff, the
> > moderators, and the users have more needs or see more uses for groups.
> > There is active interaction between the founder, other programmers,
> > moderators, and  users.
> >
> > The founder of Groups.io, Mark Fletcher, is a programmer, not a CEO hired
> > for management skills, although he has lots of  those and a history of
> > leadership in software companies: founder and CEO of the news aggregator
> > website, Bloglines, and the Vice President of Ask.com until June 2006.
> (Ask
> > Jeeves acquired Bloglines on 8 February 2005.) He won one of the annual
> > Rave Awards, presented by Wired magazine.  He has been a software
> engineer
> > at Pixel, Inc.
> >
> > Fletcher started the free mailing list service ONElist. ONElist merged
> > with eGroups, which was later acquired by Yahoo! in June 2000. Fletcher
> > wanted better. He loves mailing lists and saw more uses for them.
> >
> > Announced in September of 2014, here is Mark Fletcher’s statement of
> > purpose:
> >
> > https://wingedpig.com/2014/09/23/introducing-groups-io/
> >
> >
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
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> >
> >
> >
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>
>
>


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