Freegle Tech Report 18-12-31

Freegle Tech Report December 2018 Messages 26500-26693 Members 115

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General

A quiet month as is usual for December. Edward spent Christmas tweaking stuff and catching up on his bucket list.
Google are killing off Google Plus, which we used in our Google sign-in code, so he had to change that. Let him know if you see anything odd with the Google signin.
Edward made some changes to the servers to use a CDN. This is a service which caches stuff from your web servers to make your site faster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network.
We get access to the Azure CDN for free from Microsoft as part of their charity programme. This should improve the speed at which the FD loads. I'm not yet sure whether the difference will be that noticeable, but it's worth trying out.
Finally members are able to edit their posts and photos. There have been a few bugs with this, but it seems okay now.

Direct.

It was pointed out that the Settings page tells you how to leave individual groups, but it doesn't have a link to leave Freegle entirely. So we’ve added one.
A member complained he could not add a photo on his ‘My Posts’ just delete them so Edward added the option.
It was suggested that now members and Moderators have the option to edit posts, we may like to look at our auto mails. Instead of using delete options, groups could set up a couple where we edit them or we give members the link and suggest that they edit leaving them in hold for a couple of days.
It was suggested that being able to see how many members replied to an offer was counter-productive? Putting members off replying if they saw others had. It was discussed but there was no majority for change.

Q&A
The one mail setting I see that didn’t come over from Yahoo was Special Notices . Can we add that option at some point, unless setting to Never still means they’d still get Admins in which case ignore this ;)
A. It does.
Q. I’ve seen 2 posts in pending recently that have a big red Expired under them. Is this new and if so what does it mean?
A.I got one of these this morning, which made it easy to fix. It happens when a pretty old message which had expired is maually reposted.
Q. Inactive members, spam and suchlike. I know I posted a taken for my hoover last week, but today I have received a flurry of requests for it again so it looks like it has been auto posted again. However when I go to my posts,I am not able to scroll at all, so can't see any of my active posts at all. I'm using chrome on a laptop.
A.This happens sometimes due to browser weirdness, and usually goes away it you refresh the page.
Q. I got a post through with no photos just links
A. This post had been edited, and if the subject line, is edited the photo disappears and the text changes.
A bug I will fix it.
Q. Hi, I’m trying to help with a complaint in my group about a member who replies to many offers and messes people about with collections. I know that we now have the thumbs up and down in member's profiles but is there a way for someone to block another member from contacting them by chat?
A. Yes - there's a dropdown menu on the top right of a chat with a Block option which works between members.
Q.Any chance that someone could put the correct way to leave Freegle on the wiki please? I tried there first but couldn't find the answer, then yahoo search etc. It's really useful to have somewhere to refresh your memory if you've not been active as a member for a while.
A. Really the website is for the members and the wiki for Moderators. It will confuse them more sending them somewhere else. The leave Freegle button is there when you're logged out: The Contact button is also there, which takes you to a FAQ, which also contains the link: It is now on the Members settings page as well.
Q. These posts show they come for an IP address in Lithuania..
A.. It shows as Lithuania in other tools, e.g. https://www.whatismyip.com/ip-address-lookup/ as well. So either they're on holiday, or using an anonymisation tool.
Q. Is it possible that when editing a post the browser spell checker could be part of the process please? It works in Mod config messages I am sending but not if I am editing a pending message.
A. I'm (slowly) working on message editing for members, and as part of this the editor is changing for Freegle messages. It won't be the rich text one with all the controls, because Freegle messages are text only. That part will go live fairly soon, and you will see the spellcheck start to work in edit as part of this.
Q. As a member of the Lewisham community and three other groups, I have received emails offering the opportunity to volunteer as Governor for Crosby Ravenworth Primary School in Penrith. Did members everywhere get one?
A. Sorry, but an on-going bug meant it went national.I've hopefully fixed this one up, but not sure yet.
Q.How do I unpromise with the app, clicking promise again promises it a second time.
A. It does work if you select from MyPosts. Not if trying to unpromise from within the chat.
Q. Didn't we used to have a button to show source or show original in the spam section? So if things were under the quoted text rather than above etc you could work out what it was?
A Only ones that come in and it said this looks like it may be blank so you could click to see it. It might be useful to have that button in more places; I'll but that on my list.

Mapping.

Q I was contacted by a member last night who was enquiring about an offer that hadn't appeared.I could see no trace of her offer, so I invited her to try again. She did - still no trace. Then, later this morning, I found two copies of her post... on Tendring Freegle. I told her, and she told me she had no idea how that could have happened as that was certainly not the intention.
A People used to join local groups on Yahoo depending on where they thought they belonged, I think it would be much preferable to allow people to pick a local group when they join via FD. How about a system where Freegle suggests nearby groups rather than pick a default.
Group boundaries are mapped when a group is started by Gat. Some members as this one did falls into a space between two. New members who post without joining a specific group are popped into the one which fits their location. This results in a lot less members having their first post removed, and told to join a different group. Gat are in the process of remapping that area.
Q. When I go to my explore groups and type in Westcliff or WOS my group does not come up, I have to type the full name.
A. Sorry it powered by Google and not in our control.

Client Code Changes.

This is an automated list of the changes to the client code in the month of December If you have Any questions about them, please reply to this mail.

• Notification settings for app and browser push are missing
• Allow editing of your own messages
• Add link on Settings page through to leave Freegle completely, to make that easier to find
• When posting, if you click back then clear draft, then the screen can get blank.
• Not checking for new notifications for newsfeed etc
• When posting, stop people putting OFFER/WANTED/TAKEN/RECEIVED into the item name. This is a common mistake for people used to Yahoo.
• Notification settings for app and browser push are missing
• Allow editing of your own messages
• Add link on Settings page through to leave Freegle completely, to make that easier to find
• When posting, if you click back then clear draft, then the screen can get blank.
• Typical reply time can be confused by previous interactions
• Chat messages by email not formatted correctly.
• Old messages which are manually reposted are wrongly deemed to have expired
• Settings to email a copy of your own messages not working properly
• Typical reply time confused by nudges

...and here are the ones which are minor, or only affect volunteers in ModTools, or are internal changes that you wouldn't notice. Increase size of previous contacts shown
UT fixes*Message edit in MT, including photo addition/deletion
Work in progress for message editing including photo addition
Add more Christmas logo doodles
MT: Add display of edit history with visual diff
Start displaying edits in MT (5 days ago)
Speed-up: add moment local plugin to reduce size
(Remove error log ()
Speed-up: switch to using a CDN
Speed-up: don't load some code we don't need
Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master
Increase size of red TAKEN on MT
.htmldiff breaks IE11
MT email address who reported a spammer not showing
Fix notification counts
Message edit in MT, including photo addition/deletion
Work in progress for message editing including photo addition
This is an automated list of the changes to the server code in December If you have any questions about them, please reply to this mail.

Here are the more important ones which would affect members:

• Typical reply time can be confused by previous interactions
• Chat messages by email not formatted correctly.
• Settings to email a copy of your own messages not working properly
• Typical reply time confused by nudges
• Old messages which are manually reposted are wrongly deemed to have expired

...and here are the ones which are minor, or only affect volunteers in ModTools, or are internal changes that you wouldn't notice:

MT email address who reported a spammer not showing
UT fixes
Show edit history most recent first
Typo in email footer
Update schema
Store editing user in edit history
Return edit history for mods Edit history fixes

TN no longer uses Flickr 

Record history for message edits
More quote stripping.
Only allow listing of Freegle groups
CLI script for partial postcode statsUT fixes
Add CLI script to get partial postcode stats information for local authorities
Edit history fixes
TN no longer uses Flickr
Record history for message edits
Change edit approve/reject function a bit
Server changes to return count of edits pending review
UT fixes Server changes to allow edits to be approved/reverted
Server changes to fetch list of edits requiring review
Store whether member edit requires mod review, depending on group settings
Server changes for message editing image addition/removal
Rework Google signin to remove user of Google Plus, which is being killed off
Fixing small group area
Only allow listing of Freegle groups
CLI script for partial postcode stats Add CLI script to get partial postcode stats information for local authorities

Tech Chat.

I've had the following from a member on Slough Freegle. I'd like to answer accurately as they seem to be thinking sensibly - but not sure I have enough of an overview. Can anyone help? It appears they cannot amend their settings to receive notification by email that I have unread 'chat' messages in response to my 'offers'. There's an option to receive notification by text message, but evidently that costs Freegle money so I am dissuaded from opting for that. Emails are free, so why not offer it as a notification medium (despite some messages ending up in spam). It's unhelpful to have to leave the 'ilovefreegle' website open all the time to watch out for messages - I really can't be bothered! That's what email is for - surely?
@Tricia FYI I am looking for help on the Windsor and Maidenhead group if anyone on your Slough Group is available Email me for more info Thanks David There is a setting ‘ Mail Me Chat Messages.’ Your member should move the slider so it says Send Them.

Tricia Thanks Dee and David - on Slough, David, it is just Barbara and I modding and as we do several groups that could be our limit though equally, modding one extra makes no significant difference. Will think about it! Tricia

Dee - will setting the chat messages also send emails when there is a response to an offer or is it just true chat? I realise I have had that setting on but not always received such messages.

SarahJane By coincidence, I've just received a related query - about the button labels in Settings. When you check Notification Settings, it's not clear whether you need to click the button or not. (For example, if it says "Emails on", does that mean emails are already on, or do I need to click the button to set it?) Maybe this could be clarified (e.g. "Emails are on"/"Emails are off" - or even just "On"/"Off").
Sarah - the current state is on. This is consistent with the way mobiles tend to show settings, but I can't find a way of displaying things that doesn't confuse some small proportion of people.
Tricia - replies to posts go into chat so it applies to them too.
You don't get the mail if you see it onsite, or if your email service swallows it.
Liz Hi folks I've been trying to contact Jacky with regard to fundraising but the only email address I have for her isn't working?
@Liz which Jacky we have a few. if you mean Jacky who coordinates Dev and runs mailbox and is on Norfolk it's gyfreegle@googlemail.com
Good luck guys. I asked loads of time for them to be clearer on the Tech group.... for some reason they just didn't make sense to me .. my campaign didn't work tho lol 2 months ago
Maggie S clearer would be good :)
Edward Hibbert I'll look at adding 'are'. There should be space for that, though a lot of the buttons will need to change text to make that work.
Elaine@EdwardHibbert Could a colour change save time/space/trouble? If we coloured the active one in green, and left the inactive one grey, it might be more apparent. Or just put a tick by the current option, to show it's live?
Saira Merging accounts Q..... if a member has posted with account A which is then merged into account B, will any replies from the post end up at account B or should the member repost regardless? Thanks.
Wanda @Saira if account B is made the primary anything from A will carry over to B. effectively if the 2 accounts were say a gmail and a yahoo they could use either sign in method but the account made primary in the merge will be the one that gets any notifications and FD mail. When merging accounts if one belongs to a few more groups than the other it's best to merge to the busiest one. I think some group memberships can be lost from the one that is being merged into another if the main one doesn't have those ones on their list too so they'd have to rejoin any that were lost on the way. That's rare tho when merging but worth taking into account.
Saira OK..... thanks. So in this case they've posted to Yahoo but the gmail is now default. Will any replies from the Yahoo post get to the gmail default now?
Wanda @Saira yes they will because the member on the group is a user@ilovefreegle member and if they get any replies to their messages they go to the address they have in their settings for the member user ID which, will be whichever one was set as primary regardless of which one they originally used to post the message with as the secondary user ID info will have been gathered up into the new primary one.
Edward Hibbert @Wanda, shouldn't lose memberships.
@Ed ah yes it's when you untangle that can happen. . Ignore me Saira, I'm not on form today, if I ever am.. lol
Saira Now we've dumped Yahoo we don't need modtools on the mod team any more do we?
David No and also worth checking if republisher is on group as I dont think thats needed either
Peter I am just updating some photos on the Islington Freegle groups. For anyone wanting to put a photo on their own group Geograph http://www.geograph.org.uk have plenty to choose from. They use creative commons copyright and recently they have started stamping the creative commons acknowledgement on, much easier than doing it yourself. Each photo has the level of creative commons copyright on it. #Peter
Dee Thanks Peter, will take a look.
David Useful link and maybe worth asking Jacky if we can find a spot on the wiki for this as it can be a pain finding non copyright pics
David When I look at a members account in incognito mode I cant see a chat button on their account..what am I missing here as I have been chatting to member this afternoon..
(Member on Henley with David Booth as id
There is only a Chat button if they have outstanding Chats.
Wanda @David I searched for a David Booth in support tools and all the ones that came up didn't have any Mod chats.. Maybe they mailed without logging in using a non membership email account..
David Thanks Wanda and I think I have worked this one out They seem to have two accounts

Jean
Freegle Tech
December 2018