All posts in the topic Inviting People to Join a Group (Short link)

From: Dan Randow Date: Jun 18 06:01 UTC Short link

I am often asked "How do I invite people to my group?", so I have added
this to the FAQ.
   http://onlinegroups.net/support/faq/#invitepeople

In public groups, people can just join themselves. Whatever the privacy
setting of the group, site and group administrators can invite people to
join using the Group Admin "Add Members" features. (If you are going to
"Add Members" however, it is a good idea to email people first, to let
them know what to expect.)
    

cheers,

Dan

--

Dan Randow
Projects Director
OnlineGroups.Net
ph +64-3-377-5377 +64-27-431-4928
Kenton Chmbrs, 190 Hereford St
PO Box 739, Christchurch, 8140
Aotearoa (New Zealand)
http://onlinegroups.net
http://groupserver.org
skype: vonrandow

From: Dan Randow Date: Jun 18 08:03 UTC Short link

Hi Anette,

> sorry i could not find.

You have to be a Group Administrator to see the Group Admin link. If you
are not already, you will have to ask the Site Administrator to make you
a Group Administrator.

> is there a email i can send to friends with a link
> and with the link they can join?

Just email them a link to the home page of the group. If you look at the
home page of this group,
   http://onlinegroups.net/groups/ogn_admins
for example, you will see a link that to "register and join" in the
"Membership and Joining" section (you have to be logged out to see that).

If you have more than one group on your site, it is better to email a
link to the "Groups" page, like this one on our site.
   http://onlinegroups.net/groups/
This shows links to register and join all the public groups on the site.
    

Dan

--

Dan Randow
Projects Director
OnlineGroups.Net
ph +64-3-377-5377 +64-27-431-4928
Kenton Chmbrs, 190 Hereford St
PO Box 739, Christchurch, 8140
Aotearoa (New Zealand)
http://onlinegroups.net
http://groupserver.org
skype: vonrandow

From: hessenhexe Date: Jun 18 16:33 UTC Short link

HELLO DAN

thank you for your email.

sorry i could not find


i got on start page

then i log in

as hessenhexe


then i can see


groups and blog

and i klick groups


but in cannot find

my group

wennesnichtgeht


and also i cannot find


the button



group admin.



i only see your group:
    

onlinegroups.net




regards


anette


thank you for help

















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----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Randow" <dan@onlinegroups.net>
To: "OnlineGroups.Net Administrators" <ogn_admins@onlinegroups.net>
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 8:01 AM
Subject: [OGN Admins] Inviting People to Join a Group


>
> I am often asked "How do I invite people to my group?", so I have added
> this to the FAQ.
>   http://onlinegroups.net/support/faq/#invitepeople
>
> In public groups, people can just join themselves. Whatever the privacy
> setting of the group, site and group administrators can invite people to
> join using the Group Admin "Add Members" features. (If you are going to
> "Add Members" however, it is a good idea to email people first, to let
> them know what to expect.)
>
> cheers,
>
> Dan
>
> --
>
> Dan Randow
> Projects Director
> OnlineGroups.Net
> ph +64-3-377-5377 +64-27-431-4928
> Kenton Chmbrs, 190 Hereford St
> PO Box 739, Christchurch, 8140
> Aotearoa (New Zealand)
> http://onlinegroups.net
> http://groupserver.org
> skype: vonrandow
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Full text of this topic in OnlineGroups.Net Administrators:
> http://onlinegroups.net/r/topic/4Cs4nPBexE5g0gKANRTBqP
>
> To leave OnlineGroups.Net Administrators, email
> mailto:ogn_admins@onlinegroups.net?Subject=unsubscribe
>
> OnlineGroups.Net Administrators is powered by
> OnlineGroups.Net http://onlinegroups.net

From: hessenhexe Date: Jun 18 18:08 UTC Short link

hello

thank you
for email

i made the mistake
i was looking at the domain

i found it at the subdomain


i put in there email ads

is this the right way?
    

anette





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Kommunikationsgruppe
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alle 14 Tage
z.B.
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etc.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Randow" <dan@onlinegroups.net>
To: <ogn_admins@onlinegroups.net>
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 10:02 AM
Subject: Re: [OGN Admins] Inviting People to Join a Group


> Hi Anette,
>
>> sorry i could not find.
>
> You have to be a Group Administrator to see the Group Admin link. If you
> are not already, you will have to ask the Site Administrator to make you
> a Group Administrator.
>
>> is there a email i can send to friends with a link
>> and with the link they can join?
>
> Just email them a link to the home page of the group. If you look at the
> home page of this group,
>   http://onlinegroups.net/groups/ogn_admins
> for example, you will see a link that to "register and join" in the
> "Membership and Joining" section (you have to be logged out to see that).
>
> If you have more than one group on your site, it is better to email a
> link to the "Groups" page, like this one on our site.
>   http://onlinegroups.net/groups/
> This shows links to register and join all the public groups on the site.
>
> Dan
>
> --
>
> Dan Randow
> Projects Director
> OnlineGroups.Net
> ph +64-3-377-5377 +64-27-431-4928
> Kenton Chmbrs, 190 Hereford St
> PO Box 739, Christchurch, 8140
> Aotearoa (New Zealand)
> http://onlinegroups.net
> http://groupserver.org
> skype: vonrandow
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Full text of this topic in OnlineGroups.Net Administrators:
> http://onlinegroups.net/r/topic/4idnyFQaKmgJ3cXFD7QngN
>
> To leave OnlineGroups.Net Administrators, email
> mailto:ogn_admins@onlinegroups.net?Subject=unsubscribe
>
> OnlineGroups.Net Administrators is powered by
> OnlineGroups.Net http://onlinegroups.net

From: Richard Waid Date: Jun 21 23:50 UTC Short link

Hi Anette:

On Sat, 2008-06-21 at 11:54 +0200, hessenhexe wrote:
> how many mails are allowed to send in one day?

Currently the limit is set to 20 emails in 2 days, per person, per
group. Our limits are not intended to impose restrictions on our users,
but rather to prevent abuse by spammers. We intend to review these
restrictions from time to time, particularly if they are annoying to our
users!

> is this the email group of leaders of groups?

That's correct -- this is the group for group administrators to ask any
questions they might have about running their OnlineGroups.Net site.


Thanks for your questions,

Richard Waid
Technical Lead
OnlineGroups.Net
    

From: Richard Waid Date: Jun 25 09:34 UTC Short link

Anette:

My apologies for the delay in responding to your questions.

On Sun, 2008-06-22 at 12:29 +0200, hessenhexe wrote:
> > Currently the limit is set to 20 emails in 2 days, per person, per
> > group.
>
> i dont understand
>
> can one member send 20 or all members together?

Each member can send 20 emails in 2 days. We may raise this limit in the
near future.

> Our limits are not intended to impose restrictions on our users,
> > but rather to prevent abuse by spammers. We intend to review these
> > restrictions from time to time, particularly if they are annoying to our
> > users!
>
> we talk about this in our group because in the past we had much more mails

Thanks for the feedback, we will certainly take it on-board.

> can i as member hessenhexe join other emailgroups at your homepage?

Yes, assuming the groups are public. You can login with your email
address at any onlinegroups.net site, or into the main onlinegroups.net
site.
    

> are there groups
> mailing one mail by day or more
>
> about
>
> family problems
> relation problems
> mobbing
> relation problems
> drugs
>
> and so on?
>
> if yes
> how can i find them?

At the moment we have no central index of all groups, but I do not
currently know of a site which addresses those problems. You may wish to
start one and promote it :)

> how many members have this admin group?

Currently 256 members.

Thanks for your questions.


Best regards,

Richard Waid
OnlineGroups.Net

From: Dorje McKinnon Date: Nov 24 23:09 UTC Short link

Dan,

Your points are great and make things very clear.

One issue I perceive is when group membership is mandated by the organisation
the person is a member of.

In this case
	1 - the person doesn't need to agree to be a member, because of their
organisational role they have to be
	2 - fair enough but probably all the members will belong to the same email
domain organisation.co.nz so if it works for the Admin it will work for the
members
	3 - yes but in many cases the primary profile will be in another system e.g.
intranet

I realise this is a standard use case for an organisation using online groups -
but a non standard use case from the historical perspective of online groups.

Could others who might fall into this use case category reply to this post so
that Dan and his team can see how useful catering to this situation may be ?
    

DorjeM



-----Original Message-----
From: <email obscured> [mailto:ogn_admins@onlinegroups.net] On
Behalf Of Dan Randow
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 11:54 AM
To: OnlineGroups.Net Administrators
Subject: Re: [OGN Admins] Inviting People to Join a Group

If you have questions about adding people to your groups, please ask them by
replying to this email. Here is a quick summary of the process for joining
groups.

The process for joining a group depends on the privacy setting of the group.

  In Public groups, people can join themselves;
  the group admin can also invite people to join.

  In Private groups, the group admin can invite
  people to join; people can contact the group
  admin and request to join the group.

  In Secret groups, the only way to join is to be
  invited by the group admin.

In all cases, the person joining the group must respond to an email that is
sent to them, to confirm that they wish to join the group. Although this step
can be perceived as a barrier to joining, it achieves some important things.

1: It makes sure that each invitee explicitly agrees to join the group. (At
OnlineGroups.Net it is extremely important to us that our groups are not used
to send email to people who have not agreed to that.)

2: It makes sure that the invitee can receive email from our site. (Most people
use OnlineGroups.Net groups via email, so if they can't get the registration
email, they probably can't get the other emails.)

3: It gives the invitee an opportunity to create a profile and set a password.
(The strength of OnlineGroups.Net is that you can use it via email _and_ the
web. This gets people started with web access.)

We do not provide a way to "just add" people to groups, as we could not prevent
this from being used to add people who do not want to join a group.

cheers,

Dan


-----------------------------------------
Full text of this topic in OnlineGroups.Net Administrators:
http://onlinegroups.net/r/topic/3k5im64TqPsSwUtBHxg98T

To leave OnlineGroups.Net Administrators, email
mailto:ogn_admins@onlinegroups.net?Subject=unsubscribe

Start your own free groups and site with OnlineGroups.Net
http://onlinegroups.net

From: Walter Logeman Date: 21:32 UTC Short link

Hi Dan,
I would like to request an "add" function, as in Yahoo.  (see the
pasted bit right at the end of this email  I think it is an add
function.)  I understand and agree with the three points in your email
Dan.  There are many situations I would invite rather than add for
those reasons.  There are some other factors that sometimes outweigh
these. It was a great feature when you had it for trusted admins,
getting groups going since has been much harder.

Unverified members are difficult to engage.  This is our worst case,
and we have followed up with invites and emails.  These are people who
agreed to join verbally.  I quote from the website:

 "Manage the Members of xxxxx Online Group

There are 32 members — of which 11 members are unverified — in this
group. (Add new members.) "

I am aware of the problem in other groups.  I know you are reluctant
to make this change, but I am right now faced with yet another new
group where I think it will help, perhaps make or break it.  I will
put the case carefully.


The reasons for an add members function I see are:

"Its all in the warm-up"
The Add feature helps the flow. I think this should be high on the
list of principles in a groupserver, even though sometimes principles
conflict.  The warm-up I am thinking of is that people immediately see
welcoming messages and interesting content.  This will get them to
participate.

Welcoming a member when joined.
Once I add a person I like to welcome them. This is best on the day we
spoke and they are "hot". I like to do the welcoming and encouragement
of others to welcome at the time I enter them, not when they verify,
when I may not have the time to do this.  When I could do this I asked
members to welcome them, so they get a swag of welcomes.  This gets
the group going well.

In the case of new groups...
After a face-to-face meeting promoting the group and the committee
(say) agreeing to work in a group, there is a time when people are
more of the group.  Once I have added them I can then confidently
begin to frame the group, welcome people, invite them to post
introductions.  This helps techno phobic people belong.  They
instantly "get it".  An invite does not have this impact

Starting time for the new group
If one or two don't verify some groups can't start.  Or if they do it
is a poor start

Preventing spill over into "reply-to all"
Sometimes a group has important material to go to all, this was the
impetus for starting a group recently.   When  there are members who
have not yet verified, or if the group seems flakey to others, they
will revert to reply to all with attachments.  Then others respond to
that, and the container is lost.  This has happened in three groups I
know of.

Asking people to agree twice is an irritant.
If I have already had a discussion and a person has agreed to join,
further requests and invites are redundant.

Organisational requirement
DorjeM's point applies to most groups I create.
"1 - the person doesn't need to agree to be a member, because of their
organisational role they have to be"
For example being part of a committee that does a lot of its work online.

As for abuse of the function, perhaps you could restrict it to some.
Or do as Yahoo does warn and deactivate accounts in case of abuse.
Perhaps add a link in the footer to report abuse. Regulating openness
is better than closing doors. See Wikipedia for example.


What do others think?


Cheers,

Walter


//
From Yahoo :

NOTE: If you want your members to have access to the group web site,
we strongly recommend that you use the Invite Members feature.

The Add Members feature allows you to automatically add people to your
group's mailing list. You can add 100 members to your group per day.

(Please use the Add Members feature responsibly. Abuse can lead to
inactivation of your account.)

Enter email addresses. You may also enter the member's name after
their email address. Please use a space to separate the member's name
and email address.

Please enter one email address per line. For example:
<email obscured> James Smith
<email obscured> Patty Klein
//
    

From: Michael JasonSmith Date: 22:16 UTC Short link

Walter,

If you invite someone who is already a member of *any* OnlineGroups.Net
site then the member is sent an invitation. The invitation to an
existing member contains a single link, which takes the user to a page
that lists *all* of his or her invitations. I discuss this more in the
post below
  http://onlinegroups.net/r/post/2ppIH4B4H9qyCpCS9ebsl7