Freegle Tech Report 14-5-31
Freegle Tech Report May 2014
Posts 13492-13605
Members 93
If you are interested in participating then you are welcome to join us, even if you only want to dip in and out. Mods are wanted who are willing to try out new stuff, test any tweaks done, or just comment - please come along.
General
We have had more work done on the servers and they are now around 90% done. Although there has been a glitch or two and a couple of down times it has been quite smooth.
Had some trouble with the frgl it domain which was fixed once reported.
We have ongoing problems with Microsoft domains (hotmail, msn, outlook etc) accepting our emails. We’ve done some re-plumbing to stop this affecting other mails, but these mails continue to be significantly delayed.
Spammers & Scammers .
They still seem to be joining up but mostly besieging Direct where they are being quickly removed again.
Very few reports if any this month of members actually paying these miscreants.
If you use modtools, you now have a choice of asking the app to preban a whole host of email addresses which have been reported as spammers in the past. They are checked and verified before going on the list, or are coming from known fraudulent sources.
Please check you settings and make sure they are on or off as desired.
Freegle Direct has been integrated with some spam detection software to spot spam mails flowing through there to end-users.
Several hundred were detected in one morning. Some blocking for mails which are flagged as almost certain spam will be added.
Later on something to deal with ones which might be spam, by holding the replies and mailing the owner address to ask mods to
review and approve or reject will be developed.
Events.
A member complained that their event had been sent out with a date when she did not hold it. Investigation revealed that she had asked for it to be repeated weekly. Be aware that the app will update the date when you do this, if an event is monthly or fortnightly then you have to use those options..
Facebook, Snaply, Twitter & Direct.
We still have 100 groups not yet using any of these available tools for their group.
If you are at all interested in updating your group to allow those who don’t have computers, aren’t willing to jump through all the Yahoo hoops, in order to give their stuff away or who prefer to use their phones to Freegle, please consider adding them.
Just mail freegledirecthelp@yahoogroups.com with a request to have one or all set up for you, or with any questions you may have about them.
Facebook
There are reports of a new Facebook Anonymous Login today, which allows Facebook users to log in to a Facebook app anonymously, instead of having to give up their Facebook user information and also sign into apps without allowing them access to your Facebook user data, may cause us some problems.
We are keeping an eye on it as without access to email addresses it would be a bit useless for our purposes.
News Letters.
Don’t forget to send any interesting items for the members newsletters to Edward . Photos would be appreciated too.
If you would like to have a feature on anything particular on Freespout then please mail the team at freespout @ ilovefreegle.org
Problems sorted
Community Event Roundup did not go out in time one week. Was reported and fixed. A problem with posts not going through was also fixed eventually.
There was a problem with Admins going out to Direct members . This now appears to be working okay. Let us know if you are finding they aren’t going out.
Questions asked and responses.
Q. A Member reported trouble leaving, she kept getting re-added when going back to check.
A. This is a common problem, the answer is not to go back in. If a Facebook user then unlike the page as well.
When you ask to be removed it takes time to synch with the Yahoo group and remove it from there. Also if you remain logged in with that email address, or use a Yahoo, Facebook or Google ID to go back in you will be picked up and rejoined.
Q. We had over 20 posts to the yahoogroups today, some from FBuser emails but nothing has appeared on Freegle Direct since yesterday. They're going out by email and on yahoo but not showing on Freegle Direct.
A.Things got a bit bunged because Hotmail is rejecting our posts, a fix was put in place and they slowly caught up.
Q.I just received a response to a 'wanted' message - while it was posted by a member, the reply message is showing as the owner address:
Any idea why this might be? (It should be an FD email address!)
A. Until recently, when you were on individual emails as an FD member, FD sent the mail to you from the original user address, so that a reply would go there. When it sends multiple mails it comes from the owner. Yahoo and AOL have made a DMARC change, which meantt that any posts FD sent like this could be blocked. As a temporary measure individual emails were sent from the owner too, until a better solution can be found.
Q. Is there some way to get the member list from freegle direct without being admin on the fb pages?
A.http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Freegle_Direct_Moderator_FAQ#How_do_I_find_out_the_.27real.27_address_for_a_member.3F
Q.How do we get spammers onto the spammer list?
A. Using the spam button in ModTools, or if you don't use ModTools, from this form:
http://modtools.org/submitspammer.php
Q. You have not Freegled messages are being sent in with a new post attached. Can we stop these?
A.It would be better if we could to this, but it's hard, because we'd have to allow email posting via FD so that we could strip them out, rather than making them go to Yahoo, which would then require us to have a much better spam-filtering story. If they ignore the "please remember to use the subject line" format then there's not much we can do about the subject line.
It was agreed that we would have a link to the group message maker in each post to help.
Q. I used to have an option to change the subject line when replying to a mail in gmail, but haven't been able to find a way to do that since they changed the format,.
A.Look at the email address, you're sending it to. There is a little arrow as if it's going back and an arrow going down (one button though) press it, and you'll see 'Edit subject' and the email will open in another box where you can edit the subject line .
Q. This huge garbledegook email has landed in our inbox, subject line: Freegle Direct - user is not a member
It was also cc'd to the log address, do we need to do anything about it?
A. There seems to be a path which results in
bounce@...trying to mail your group. This is wrong, and I'll be looking into it. Meanwhile ignore any mails you get about that.
Q.A member has complained about a plasma tv post that is on the group and I am trying to find it to delete it
A. My guess would be that it has been deleted by FD after a spammer was blocked from the group.
Q. A member is showing that she left the Banbury Yahoo group in March. When I download the FD memberlist it is still showing her email address as a member. Her offer posts to the group are bouncing and she'd like it fixed asap :-)
A. As she used the Yahoo button to access Direct so was not assigned an FB userid. Leaving Yahoo means it won't work any more.Send her an invite to the Yahoo group and tick the mail only box if she wants to use Direct, explain they are linked but she can opt for no emails on Yahoo.
Q Offer disappearing from 'My Posts'
Q. I was checking Freegle Direct because the snaply posts don't seem to be closing properly, when I was looking at the messages I kept seeing "Not a group member with this email"
A. Yes this happened on several if not all groups on Saturday when the servers were being transferred.
I have seen it before as well and assumed it is because access to the list it checks against is unavailable.
Snaply
This is easy to add to your group if you are using Direct. Just tick the box and save. Don’t know how to find your group settings mail sueandjean @ gmail.com and she will send you the link or do it for you.
Members are using their phones for more and more stuff so it makes sense to allow them to use them for Freegling. Both Snaply and Trashnothing have apps, and except for the over exuberance of TN members joining lots of groups in an area, there have been no problems. Very useful for emptying a relatives home, who is going into sheltered housing or has died and is probably not on the internet.
A moderator found her post via Snaply did not come through to the group. After you snap your item and before you send it, you have to pull the slider across to Freegle or it will just go out on Snaply.
Support Group
Email support @ ilovefreegle.org
We do have a support group for moderators and members use, you just need to send them an email.
Mostly for problems or questions with Direct, Facebook, Event stuff or anything else you may want help with, which you don't wish to post on Central.
Think of them as a first line of defence to sift out some of the stuff sent to Edward. They will still be passed on if necessary or will contact other groups for help with your query.
They will
Remove members for you .
Find out more information about a member if required.
Give advice if you are struggling to understand something.
Yahoo changes.
Digests with multiple posts still come from the owner address. To reply members need to click on the links in the mail.
Mails with a single post come from the owner address because of the DMARC stuff going on with Yahoo et al, but have a Reply-To header set to
send replies back to the right person (if the recipient's email client does that correctly) and also have the name in the friendly name portion
of the from field.
Jean
Freegle Tech
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