On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 6:05 PM, queenmaven <queenmaven@...> wrote:
> I thought there was a way to post a hyperlink (or make one) when
>  posting a message on my group.  I was trying to do this over the
>  weekend, but for the life of me could not find a hyper-link button or
>  get anything to work.
>
>  Can someone please help?

The 'foolproof' way of 'creating' links that takes plain-text groups
into account is to simply enclose the whole URL in <angle brackets
like this> and ensure you start it off with http:// e.g.:
<http://www.example.com>, also works in-line.

On 'rich-text' editors, the methods wildly differ, and in order to
help there, we need to know which one you're using.

Assuming, from your email address, you're talking about the beta
editor on Yahoo, someone will no doubt be along shortly with
instructions for that (I've never used it.)

--
PJH

A man in a shellsuit goes into a posh furriers. He says to the shop
assistant "I want a coat".
The shop assistant, barely concealing her disdain, asks "What fur?"
The man replies "Fur ma girlfriend".

Shal,
Thank you. I've been trying to understand some of these same issues
that Don asked about.  I still however don't get why grouply would be
of value to someone, but that's okay I guess.

I do find it interesting how some of us use these forums so very
differently than others do, and how sonetimes when I think I know what
someone else is talking about, in the end I reallyhave no clue.

I find I've somehow gotten to the point where I no longer have to just
figure everything out, and grouply seems to be one of those things.

Pardon the rambling.  Just expressing some curiosity is all.

Phil


On 3/30/08, Shal Farley <shalf@...> wrote:
> Don,
>
> >... most of the posts here treat it like it was something to be
> >concerned about. So, evidently, I am missing something.
>
> This rather voluminous thread encompasses many of the arguments about
> Grouply:
> <http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/GroupManagersForum/message/25012>
>
> >It looks to me like it could be a way of maintaining privacy of
> >the member to prevent his or her address from being harvested by
> >SPAMers and avoid other privacy problems (something I myself am
> >concerned about and as a result tend to avoid groups that won't
> >let me hide my email address).
>
> A feature available here in GMF. Given that our archives are open to
> "anyone" (including non-members) you may want to avail yourself of it. ;-)
>
> As for hiding your ISP email address, an @grouply address is no more or less
> anonymous than an @yahoo, @gmail, or other free sign-up email service. Or
> did you mean something else?
>
> >What do I need to be concerned about with addresses that use the
> >Grouply domain, and is it an entirely bad thing? How can it be
> >used in a way that is bad for a group?
>
> The primary concern is for groups that discuss sensitive personal subjects,
> there is some concern that Grouply's security mechanisms will fail and
> expose a group message (or many or all of them) to people that are not
> otherwise entitled to see that message. This concern is founded in fact,
> Grouply did have such a flaw -- if a group was set to keep its archives
> private (moderators only) and a moderator joined Grouply, Grouply would make
> the group's messages available to all group members. That has been fixed,
> but the incident left many group moderators wary.
>
> Another area of concern is exposure of group members to each other: two
> Grouply subscribers that happen to share a Yahoo group membership in common
> are considered "friends" by Grouply, and are able to read each other's
> Grouply profile, including the fact that they are both members of a (list
> of) Yahoo Group(s). Too, a Grouply subscriber can choose to show all of
> their Group memberships to other Grouply subscribers. Some group moderators
> do not want their group's identity shown to non-members in this way.
>
> Other concerns tend to be concerns on behalf of the members: such as the
> concern over the member's choice to give Grouply their Yahoo ID and
> password. That does not directly affect the group, but many group moderators
> want to protect their members from this risk.
>
> >If it is something to be concerned about, I would think that we could
> >pre-ban anyone using one of those addresses and state that up-front
> >before one attempts to join a group.
>
> You can certainly state your restrictions up front, on your home page or in
> a text file sent to pending members. But there is no "wild-card" ban
> capability: you can't pre-ban all the potential @grouply addresses.
>
> -- Shal
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> ----------------------------------------------
> You are a member of Yahoo! GroupManagersForum.
> ----------------------------------------------
> For more information, send a blank email to:
> GroupManagersForum-help@yahoogroups.com
>
> To stop receiving mail, send blank email to:
> GroupManagersForum-nomail@yahoogroups.com
> ----------------------------------------------
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 1:11 AM, Kathy H <bonsaikathy@...> wrote:
[...]
>  This is all on an ugly green background. It's extremely messy looking.

Change it then? http://groups.yahoo.com/group/*GROUPNAME*/settings?mode=12


--
PJH

A man in a shellsuit goes into a posh furriers. He says to the shop
assistant "I want a coat".
The shop assistant, barely concealing her disdain, asks "What fur?"
The man replies "Fur ma girlfriend".

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 8:27 PM, geatorella <geatorella@...> wrote:
> Thanks to all for the pre-banning suggestion.  I still would like
>  Yahoo to give us a way to ban a user from multiple groups at once.

On the surface, a nice suggestion. However...

I can conceive of no (useable) interface that they could create that
would take into account the vagaries of what a significant number of
moderators would require.

2 real-life examples:
1) job-spam is not allowed in most of the programming groups I
participate in, except one where it is allowed providing certain rules
are followed (needless to say, most don't bother following the rules
anyway, but that's by the by.)
2) I cannot ban in all the groups I moderate in.

It also fails to take into account the 50/account/group/day limit, and
how easily it would be breached if you moderate enough disparate
groups.

No doubt you could come up with some 'easy' scheme that Y! could use
to satisfy your needs, but remember, if they were to introduce such a
tool, they'd need it to be customisable enough to fit at least 80% of
moderators.

--
PJH

A man in a shellsuit goes into a posh furriers. He says to the shop
assistant "I want a coat".
The shop assistant, barely concealing her disdain, asks "What fur?"
The man replies "Fur ma girlfriend".

> >  This is all on an ugly green background. It's extremely messy
looking.
>
> Change it then?
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/*GROUPNAME*/settings?mode=12

I believe you can change the text of the welcome message, but nothing
else. You have no way of changing the format, the background color, or
anything else added by Yahoo?

Phil,

>I still however don't get why grouply would be
>of value to someone, but that's okay I guess.

Certainly okay. There's no reason to expect that it suits everyone's needs -- to
some it may be wonderful, to others pointless.

Those that like it most seem to focus on the ability to "bookmark" and "tag"
messages for later reference, as well as the ability to define searches that
operate across messages from many groups at once and can be saved such that they
update automatically to find any new messages that match the search.

To a certain extent I can do those things in my email client, but at some point
it gets cumbersome to download and keep all the messages from all my groups just
in case I might later want to do that kind of search.

>I do find it interesting how some of us use these forums so very
>differently than others do, and how sonetimes when I think I know what
>someone else is talking about, in the end I reallyhave no clue.

Ain't it the truth. With a few million groups, and a few hundred million
members, you're bound to bump into a few that make no sense to you.

-- Shal

Is there any way to get the time stamp of message postings to display
in local time. My group's messages are time stamped seven hours ahead
of local time.

I am interested in how effective the delete as spam button has been?

Has anyone noticed persistent spammers , (the ones that post across a
a wide range of groups, often on a 3 weekly cycle),not posting
with such regularity?

Is there any action taken on the addresses that are marked as spam, by
using the delete as spam button?

Do we still need to ban the individual spammers,if we use the delete
as spam button?

Should there be an extra feature added into the delete as spam , so
that we can delete as spam and ban member in one action?

Perhaps a 3rd feature could be incorporated, so that the action taken
is delete as spam,ban the spammer and report as abuse , all with 1
click?




  --- In GroupManagersForum@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Herring"
<pauljherring@...> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 8:27 PM, geatorella <geatorella@...> wrote:
> > Thanks to all for the pre-banning suggestion.  I still would like
> >  Yahoo to give us a way to ban a user from multiple groups at once.

I have a comment and questions regarding this matter ---

I have a Yahoo ID that I had designated as "Adult".  It does have a picture. 
Not one of adult nature.  I've since changed the designation from "Adult" since
Yahoo will no longer allow me to indicate such.  Will Yahoo still delete the
picture?  If picture editing is available on the 10th, I plan on putting the
same picture back up.

My first question - The statement also says "mature content will be removed". 
Does this mean Yahoo is going to go through profile by profile and delete any
mention of adult based groups from the links sections?  Or, maybe they'll just
delete the links section all together.
My second question - Will Yahoo go profile by profile and delete any mention of
an adult nature in the "Hobbies", "Latest News", or "Favorite Quote" sections?
My third question - Will Yahoo delete the "Interests" section or just those
interests of an adult nature?

I can't understand Yahoo's obsessive compulsion to try to make the world one of
flowers and butterflies.  Millions of adults worldwide use Yahoo as a starting
ground to find other adults with like interests.  If for nothing else an IM chat
partner.  I don't think Yahoo has thought this latest prospect out.  I know both
I and many of my online friends would like to keep "Adult" profiles and to keep
them inaccessible to minors.

Charles - an adult of 43 years of age.  Not a child who needs to have my hand
held when surfing the internet.


[Mod note: Did you read the other follow-up posts in this thread?]


----- Original Message ----
From: Jean

I recieved this notice from Yahoo! about designating a profile as adult.

"We're making some changes that will affect one of your Yahoo!
profiles. After April 9, 2008, mature content will not be
permitted within Yahoo! Profiles.

In accordance with this new policy, users will no longer be able to
designate an "adult profile," and mature content will be removed."


[Mod note: Posted to GMF as Special Notice on 3/27/08 - Message #25485.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GroupManagersForum/message/25485 .
This change in Profiles has NO relationship to Yahoo Groups.]

Go to http://tinyurl.com

Phil

On 4/1/08, Silicon Valley SPIN wrote:
> I find that this works fine until I get one of those really long urls.
> it line wraps and drops off the part that is on the second line, so
> the link becomes a broken link in the email that everyone gets.

I have never found evidence that either the "delete as spam" or the spammer
button has any effects. This could well be equivalent to having traffic
control signs on a highway, used solely to mollify residents, not control
traffic - it's well known that drivers ignore them, but residents think
"something good has been done", and end of story for the traffic department.

I get rid of spammers by deleting (NOT rejecting) their messages, and
banning them through the member control. I haven't had any repeats from any
of them, but then, spammers usually are a one shot deal.





Cordially,

Rick O'Keefe

Founder & co-moderator

http://tinyurl.com/2ce7o4



This email was sent on 4/2/08 at 6:08 PM by Rick.


[Mod note: The "Delete as spam" option is meant to help "train" the
spam filter. Yahoo and most emails programs work in a similar fashion.]

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 4:27 AM, Silicon Valley SPIN <sv_spin@...> wrote:
>
>  I find that this works fine until I get one of those really long urls.
> Then it line wraps and drops off the part that is on the second line, so the
> link becomes a broken link in the email that everyone gets.  Has anyone
> found a way around this?

Most email clients will recognise URLs encased in angle brackets and
shouldn't break even the longest of URLs.

As a test:
<http://www.example.com/gOFZ2QMWhs/748gAKQ40T/N3fDDjAaxv/u6mOFRLpUk/BFLNNqZr4O/Z\
wPBFnYSbu/cnJENnN6zw/ETydX0qcv7/S0UV8EBUDe/HOoaQIqhZF/vTYoTZP8XE/SRkhluhz2A/w58P\
eaVUzQ/hRYllKqbsZ/cRsVYNIKsV/JkERQuWwlC/KBtl4HszDl/fVQ4kJw7jj/twfLfgg13j/KRe3t8S\
my2/6rk9x6YMJb/SZjKeTIzrl/W0qHKNLN79/qImpse8n66/zft5wdyy7T/DnUElc694e/gPvOVlSarw\
/SnSt671stR/BFLnydbHqI/1rSXKd6CAE/NrBo6cO5Jp/lntCbF2JGS/DELU7nM5B5/UDG2e3P6bR/Tx\
iN7Wqmqr/nhGACKKcK7/gsVH1TNt7e/59iEsoEOxU/NxvrtyXJX9/DBbCWQQQMB/CD95x7p0w5/U9qsg\
k5M7r/7yL7NqDJNq/YGWvExxN9d/reNmzZDlVv/YHNY85WltN/KPQiqTopYE/Q02qZFui6e/CQ0L9GmS\
nY/kTc75SUs6g/>



--
PJH

A man in a shellsuit goes into a posh furriers. He says to the shop
assistant "I want a coat".
The shop assistant, barely concealing her disdain, asks "What fur?"
The man replies "Fur ma girlfriend".

Inside or outside of yahoo Groups, take your awfully long URL to tinyurl.com
http://tinyurl.com/

Paste it into the box, and receive back a - what can I say - a TINY URL!

This group's URL is
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GroupManagersForum/

TinyURL converts it to
http://tinyurl.com/yczspc

54 characters down to 25. The longer the URL, the more you save!

(Tinyurl is free,  don't work for them, and they're not paying me for this)

  - Steve


[Mod note: The 'tech' part (removed above) prefacing GMF's URL (or
similar word in any Group's URL) is not necessary and can be removed.]

________________________________

	 From: Silicon Valley SPIN



I find that this works fine until I get one of those really long
urls.  Then it line wraps and drops off the part that is on the second line,
so the link becomes a broken link in the email that everyone gets.  Has
anyone found a way around this?

I'm the founder of an unlisted group that has been on yahoo for eight
years. Today, for the first time, we got the "adult content" warning
and the members have to do the "I agree" login. We're a discussion
group and it's mostly political.
  Anyone know what's going on?

"TucsonHikers" <tucsonhikers@...> wrote:
>
> Is there any way to get the time stamp of message postings to display
> in local time. My group's messages are time stamped seven hours ahead
> of local time.

  check your yahoo account settings. you probably have it set to the
wrong time zone.
bill keiser

--- In GroupManagersForum@yahoogroups.com, "TucsonHikers"
<tucsonhikers@...> wrote:
>
> Is there any way to get the time stamp of message postings to display
> in local time. My group's messages are time stamped seven hours ahead
> of local time.

I believe the time displayed on Group postings gets set as per your
own personal setting. IOW each member gets an individual view as far
as time is concerned.

To change your own time zone click "My Account" (very top by the
Yahoo! icon on any Group page), look for "Time Zone:" (sort of in the
middle), then change it if necessary.

--- In GroupManagersForum@yahoogroups.com, "Terry"
<modelpower2006@...> wrote:
>
> I am interested in how effective the delete as spam button has been?
>
> Has anyone noticed persistent spammers...not posting
> with such regularity?
>
> Is there any action taken on the addresses that are marked as spam,
> by using the delete as spam button?
>
> Do we still need to ban the individual spammers,if we use the delete
> as spam button?
>
> Should there be an extra feature added into the delete as spam , so
> that we can delete as spam and ban member in one action?
>
> Perhaps a 3rd feature could be incorporated, so that the action
> taken is delete as spam,ban the spammer and report as abuse , all
> with 1 click?

All good questions, Terry IMO.

Unfortunately, Yahoo does not give us good tools to pin this down.
This is the log message I saw today after executing a Delete as Spam:

" Rejected message #6313 via web by ottawahitech"

You will notice that the eddress of the spammer does not appear in the
  log - so if my memory is not great I will never notice that I am
deleting messages from the same eddress, over and over.

You will also notice that the log message does not distinguish between
messages simply deleted and those deleted as spam.

--- In GroupManagersForum@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Herring"
<pauljherring@...> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 4:27 AM, Silicon Valley SPIN <sv_spin@...> wrote:
> >
> >  I find that this works fine until I get one of those really long
urls.
> > Then it line wraps and drops off the part that is on the second
line, so the
> > link becomes a broken link in the email that everyone gets.  Has
anyone
> > found a way around this?
>
> Most email clients will recognise URLs encased in angle brackets and
> shouldn't break even the longest of URLs.
>
> As a test:

This is my preferred method.  The angle brackets work as long as the
URL is a complete one starting with http://  and has a space or a
carriage return before and after the < >.  The only time I have seen
it fail is when someone assigns MS Word as the composer for Outlook;
Word will sometimes add spaces after punctuation marks, which breaks
the URL.  Solution is don't use Word with Outlook.

I don't like TinyURL used by itself because you can't tell where it
goes till you click on it.  Could be a redirect to anywhere...

If you go to the TinyURL website, you can have it set a cookie that
will preview the location of every TinyURL link, before it redirects
you there.

GrizzlyBear

I am trying to get my 1900 contacts an invite.  Yahoo states only fifty
can be invited at a time.  WHY in the world do we have to type each one
in manually, on a separate line, instead of using our address book?
They say it's against policy to import an entire book...fine.  But, why
not give us access to pull fifty at a time from our book???  To make
our lives difficult?  I just don't get it.  I tried to Compose an email
and selected 50, but if you copy and paste into the Invite block, it
brings commas, arrows, names and quotations.  Cleaning it up is just as
tedious as typing in them manually.  Any suggestions on a way around
this?  Thanks, Jill

PJH,

>As a test:

That 573 character URL came through fine as a working link to nowhere in Eudora
7 (in case anyone wanted to know).

Clever, I didn't know or had forgotten about this:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com>

Yahoo Groups team take note: that would be a good idea for the groups name space
as well.

-- Shal

TucsonHikers,

>Is there any way to get the time stamp of message postings to display
>in local time. My group's messages are time stamped seven hours ahead
>of local time.

Dates/Times shown on Groups' pages (outside of the message body itself) _are_
usually shown in your local time.
Screen shot: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/shalf/2384859774/>

In the message body (by view source) they are in whatever timezone the sender or
server used, but these are followed by a standard indication of the offset from
GMT. For example, The Groups message poster uses +0000 (GMT) as its timezone, so
if you look in the view source for messages posted from the group, that's what
you see in the Date: header.

In addition to what Bill & ottawahitech said, another common way to get confused
is to look at the messages while not signed in (works for GMF and other groups
with access set to "anyone", but maybe not for your group) -- in that case the
web pages are in +0000 (aka GMT). That is 7 hours later than Pacific Daylight
Time -- which might not be a coincidence if your local time is PDT (-0700), as
mine is.

-- Shal

I have found that the easiest way around the situation for the author is
to follow the instructions at this website:

http://tinyurl.com/

I have used it extensively and it works great. This obviates the issues
about what editor is being used or how sophisticated the user is.

Bob



GrizzlyBear wrote:
>
>
>
> I don't like TinyURL used by itself because you can't tell where it
> goes till you click on it. Could be a redirect to anywhere...
>
> If you go to the TinyURL website, you can have it set a cookie that
> will preview the location of every TinyURL link, before it redirects
> you there.
>

A member of our Group uses Google calendar and has asked if there is a
way to synchronize Yahoo&Google. I remember seeing something about
synchronizing one's personal Yahoo Calendar with a Group calendar, but
know little about calendars period.

Anyone?

In all our groups we have a take-no-prisoners mentality when it comes
to spammers.  Anyone who attempts to spam our groups is immediately
banned.  We don't even think about it.  It prevents them from lurking
in the group and culling email address for their future spam.  But
I've always wondered, as you do, if any other action is taken by Yahoo
when spam is reported.  I tend to think there would be bilions of
reports and you could never hire enough people to deal with it all.


[Mod note: The "Delete as spam" option is meant to help "train" the
spam filter. Yahoo and most emails programs work in a similar fashion.]


--- In GroupManagersForum@yahoogroups.com, "Terry" wrote:
>
> Do we still need to ban the individual spammers,if we use the delete
> as spam button?
>

--- In GroupManagersForum@yahoogroups.com, Bob Howell wrote:
>
> I have found that the easiest way around the situation for the author is
> to follow the instructions at this website:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/
>
> I have used it extensively and it works great. This obviates the issues
> about what editor is being used or how sophisticated the user is.
>
>

My objections to it stand.  It is a security risk.  It could easily be
used to redirect someone to a phishing site, or some other kind of
hosted exploit, and the clicker wouldn't know where they were being
sent till they got there.  At that point the damage might already be
done.  The TinyURL link for a New York Times story looks no different
than the TinyURL link for Bulgarian-Malware-R-Us.com

Word plus Outlook has the potential to break any URL containing a
punctuation mark, not just the ones that span multiple lines.  It
should not be used casually, that is by unsophisticated users who
don't understand how its features may affect things like URLs.

GrizzlyBear

On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 10:47 AM, Bob Howell <howellr@...> wrote:
> I have found that the easiest way around the situation for the author is
>  to follow the instructions at this website:
>
>  http://tinyurl.com/
>
>  I have used it extensively and it works great. This obviates the issues
>  about what editor is being used or how sophisticated the user is.

And totally hides the destination of the link, such that:

1) people don't trust them (c.f. goatse/rick-rolling)

2) some places refuse to allow them.


--
PJH

A man in a shellsuit goes into a posh furriers. He says to the shop
assistant "I want a coat".
The shop assistant, barely concealing her disdain, asks "What fur?"
The man replies "Fur ma girlfriend".