Freegle Tech Report 15-09-30

Freegle Tech Report September 2015
Posts 15983-16166
Members 106

General

A quiet month with no major problems. A check on Yahoo groups mail, showed that Yahoo is still failing to send out around 3-4% of posts by email. We are also failing to get any response to our enquiries about it. Edward is twiddling to try and improve the ratio received by FD by sending them from two sources. We are still getting reports in for posts bouncing, both from the providers and the message makers. The latter is declining but unfortunately a coding error moved the warning into the footer for a while.

Voting.

Some work was put into Direct to try and increase our votes. Whilst the response was fairly good, only half our groups put out an admin about it.
We will have to wait a little while for the result but the general feeling is that we failed to get sufficient votes over the last couple of days when some of the othera had large increases.

Message maker

Some members have been concerned that someone else's email address is showing on their posts.
This is an FB user email address and is a result of the use of the message makers to make a post. In order to get accepted by Yahoo the message maker app looks up members who fill in Yahoo or AOL email addresses and substitutes the FB user one, which should now also be a member of the group.
If for some reason the FB membership is not on your group please send an email only invite to it.

Mobiles

Various stats on the mobile app are here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y6tz_tgz9eKyQ6aKaM0i37EMkr_0SQaboBYlEjGZpgo/edit?usp=sharing
Total downloads are 7,781 though this doesn't include installs for iOS version less than 8.
The average rating is 4.31 over 38 ratings.

I've now got a Freegle mobile app banner - and it was at the Festival of Thrift at the weekend. The Freegle Funding group has been recently been discussing possible options for the app in future, which include having a paid-for version, having an option to make an in-app purchase/donation or showing ads in the app.
Please go to FreegleFunding if you wish to take part in this discussion.
Chris
App hat

Questions.

Q Could a "remember my login details " be added. Just now it keeps you logged in for a while then you have to enter the password again?
A.It should remember you. The next time you have to log in, after you've done it, can you use the Contact option to
"Send app feedback" that will include a trace of activity which might help work out what's happening

Facebook

Facebook events have been suspended because there was no indication that people were engaging with them.
Unless we get a revamp of what our Facebook pages are for, possibly turning them into Facebook groups, it's unlikely that people will engage with us.
If you want your events on the page you will have to cut and paste them.

Mapping

I've prototyped a different way of finding a location, rather than using Google.
Look up the lat/lng Find the closest and most popular match in a list of locations generated from messages which
have been approved by a moderator for this group
What that should mean is that the location it finds is of a format that the mods on that group like - otherwise
they shouldn't have approved it.

Please could people experiment with this for their groupid with a variety of latitudes and longitudes?

https://directdev.ilovefreegle.org/api/closestlocation.php?groupid=2&lat=55.9&lng=-3.1

Spammers

We were asked if something changed with Freegle Direct in that it doesn't remove spammers anymore?
One at least was reported but has never been removed. It turned out to be a new trick that this spammer is using
- they were posting from these kinds of emails:

ashubisong1+28@...

ashubisong1+56@...
ashubisong1+48@...
A fix has now been applied to pick them up.

Problems sorted.

A member was having difficulty saving his changes in the settings of FD. Please would you switch off his emails for him.
This was done but we still need a teamviewer session to work out why it is not sticking for some members.
A report of Yahoo Members posts not getting accepted was traced to the conversion process being turned off while Edward was away.
It was re-enabled and converted this member. Some groups would have received more FBuser requests than usual as it caught up.
Some events were not appearing, which turned out to be a reappearance of the enddate being in the past.
A teamviewer session was required and done and it should now be sorted.
A member complained that when she posts messages use the message maker her post does not show her user name. Although this has not
caused any problems for offering items it just annoyed her.
This was caused by us blocking the IP address of a Snaply server. This address has now been whitelisted
===Questions answered.===
Q A group was interested to get an idea of the proportion of members/posts coming from FD/TN/yahoo and asked for help.
A The data was found for that group. This data is not readily available but if someone has time to write code for it it
could be of use.
Q. How can I ban the real email address of an FBuser to prevent them from joining again, with a different FBUser email address?
A On your group direct settings , Advanced options, blocked emails put in their real email address.
Q I noticed that a person with a yahoo.co.uk has made a post via the message maker on a group. I was under the impression
that y yahoo.co.uks were bounced along with aol posts. Is that correct?
A No at present .co.uk emails are not bounced, just .com ones but they have still been issued with a FBuser email as it is probable
that at some point they will be affected,

Q. A member complained because his taken had not removed the offer even though he had posted twice.
A, It will be removed from the ‘Recent posts’ which is the default, but it will remain on the ‘All Posts’ tab.

Q. I have been posting on Twitter and have got quite a few following my account. How do I know that they are members and are alright?
A They do not become members just because they follow you, they can't reply to posts unless they join your group.
They only see some posts. Yahoo members who elect not to have theirs shown do not go on. I can't see why anyone
would want to follow you unless they are interested in Freegle. If you don't follow them then no one sees their posts
from your account. You can choose to follow some of them if when clicking on them you feel they are alright.

Q. I have just had a member say they cannot post a taken from MYPosts tab as their offer is not showing.
A Checking showed they had posted an offer using FD. This was an example of FD not having the message because Yahoo
hadn't mailed it out to the republisher@ address. Posts do not go on a Members tab until the approved post has been
received, in case it is spam or disallowed.

Q.  A  member made the same Wanted post on 1st, 3rd, & 5th. By mistake we let through the last two of those. He is getting
 reminders the first post but this is reposted too soon.

A. Members will get a reminder at the groups required interval for each post approved. It doesn’t stop them making the same post
twice, though many members just wait for the reminder so that they do not post early. I assume that the this email was sent as a
follow-up to his post of 1st.
Q. I was wondering if anyone has the short link for this groups Direct page
A All groups short links point to the platform preferred by the group owners. For most it will be Direct and in the format
freegle.in/groupshortname. If a group has two or more parts to their name, they should each as well as the whole,
have been given a shortlink. Filton-Patchway-Stokes-Freegle should have four. If you need a Direct shortlink for a group set to go to Yahoo you need to use https://directv2.ilovefreegle.org/walsall for example or click on the Freegle heart at
www.ilovefreegle.org/groups.
Q. A member has got a reminder where there is only one clickable option.
A We could see all the options. However it seems that a trick which simulates an image using CSS, to bypass image blockers
does cause problems for some users, and mangles the emails. At some point it will be removed and replaced with an image.

Don’t forget any Freegle Direct queries can be sent to support@ilovefreegle.org.a
Jean
Tech Report
Sept 2015