Thanks for the feedback. I would like to think google groups has much improved since you last used it.
We will restrict posting to group members, so the question then is how to moderate the applicants. The mailman system does this by sending an email to any applicant where they have to confirm the application. That seems to weed out the spammers - I am not aware of any spammer that confirmed the application and then sent spam to our forums. We could do the same, either manually or through a form on the website. It will be interesting to see how this works with our test group. I agree that chat is better than beta for testing. In the test, the mailman forum will be running as before but just not posting messages. So it would be easy to revert to mailman. On Sun, Aug 27, 2023 at 2:29 AM Ian Clark <earthspo...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Sorry to be a party-pooper, but I find this disturbing. > > At one time or other I've helped moderate some 5-10 googlegroups. To begin > with I felt they were the best thing since sliced bread. The > information-gathering tools are superb – but that's all that can be said > for them. All the googlegroups I know of have been closed down (to the > relief of the membership) as forum owners come to realise that obscure > obsolescent media do have the advantage of keeping one's affairs under the > radar. > > All "my" googlegroups proved to be hard work for moderators. No matter what > protection you opt for, the barriers are semi-permeable. There's a whole > industry in penetrating them, and you have to be ultra-cautious who you let > in. Ensure the very existence of the group is visible to nobody but members > – but that's not enough. Googlegroups are, after all, free mailing-lists > for spammers who can break into them. In practice over 90% of applicants to > join the groups I know of were bad actors. As time went on it grew steadily > worse. > > Google has wonder tools for checking the usage history of an applicant, but > it's not the work of a moment to use them. With a bit of practice you get > to recognise the profile of a spammer, but the checking has to be done, and > done promptly, i.e. within an hour or two. Else members are flooded with > spam offering unwholesome products, or worse, and once you've banned the > malefactor there's a helluva mess to clear up, which (for members) doesn't > seem to stay confined to the forum. Spammers have tactics for overwhelming > moderators to compel them to cut corners. You'd get a hundred or so > applicants all at once, and the thing to do is reject the lot. > > I daresay my 2¢ will not be welcome, but I feel I ought to sound a note of > warning. You are at liberty to dismiss it – my experience is 10 years > out-of-date: plenty of time for Google to plug its many holes. But also > plenty of time for spammers to hone their tools. Big friendly Google cuts > cat-flaps in every door in your machine (*vide* Duck-Duck-Go) and where > Google goes, others can follow. > > (Surely I must be teaching granny to suck eggs with all this – if so, my > abject apologies. Put it down to my age.) > > But if notwithstanding we are all happy to embrace Google for the delicious > bait in its mousetraps, I'd be inclined to try it out with something you > can instantly shut down, like Chat – anyway a sweeter honeypot for bad > actors – than Beta, which for all its low traffic I think of as > mission-critical. > > Ian Clark > > On Tue, 22 Aug 2023 at 19:58, chris burke <cbu...@jsoftware.com> wrote: > > > (This message is cross posted to programming and general. Please reply > > to general, thanks.) > > > > Dear All > > > > We plan to migrate the forums from Mailman to Google Groups, which has > > similar features. After the migration, the user experience of the > > forums should be essentially the same. A new feature is a browseable > > message list, for example see https://groups.google.com/g/osmand. > > > > See wiki page code.jsoftware.com/wiki/System/Forums/Migration for more > > information. > > > > We expect to migrate the beta forum for testing early in September, > > with the remaining forums to follow if all goes well. > > > > Chris > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
