Freegle Tech Report 15-03-31
Freegle Tech Report March 2015
Posts 14300-14532
Members 98
General
Jacky is asking working groups for their remit for the new Freegle Ltd and this was discussed. This group was set up originally for tech planning and development, but has developed more as a place to come in order for moderators to ask questions about the tech side of moderating. It was decided that the Geeks would try and discuss more of the planning and development onsite, but that we would not want to discourage group mods from bringing their queries here. New wording has been agreed and it will be put on the Wiki once it has passed the Board.
It was also discussed about closing unused groups. We we happy to see Home Page Help closed and Growth to be incorporated into Structure. Some older discussion groups will also be mothballed or archived. Please contact centralmods@gmail.com if you know of any groups that may need archiving and /or mothballing. Especially groups used to set up Freegle.
The Board discussed doing a trial of a banner asking for a £1 donation. That's live on FD now. In a few days we had donation of £73 but only two donations were from end-users - both of whom increased their donation from the ask of £1 (to £2 and £5). The others were from Moderators.
Freegle App
A new version of the app is available here:https://www.ilovefreegle.org/mobile/
Existing users will be prompted to download it.
There is a sheet summarising things to do: features, bugs, suggestions, etc:
[[ Freegle Tech Report March 2015 Posts 14300-14532 Members 98 General Jacky is asking working groups for their remit for the new Freegle Ltd and this was discussed. This group was set up originally for tech planning and development, but has developed more as a place to come in order for moderators to ask questions about the tech side of moderating. It was decided that the Geeks would try and discuss more of the planning and development but that we would not want to discourage group mods from bringing their queries here. New wording has been agreed and it will be put on the Wiki once it has passed the Board. It was also discussed about closing unused groups. We we happy to see Home Page Help closed and Growth to be incorporated into Structure. Some older discussion groups will also be mothballed or archived. Please contact centralmods@gmail.com if you know of any groups that may need archiving and /or mothballing. Especially groups used to set up Freegle. The Board discussed doing a trial of a banner asking for a £1 donation. That's live on FD now. In a few days we had donation of £73 but only two donations were from end-users - both of whom increased their donation from the ask of £1 (to £2 and £5). The others were from Moderators. Freegle App A new version of the app is available here:https://www.ilovefreegle.org/mobile/ Existing users will be prompted to download it. There is a sheet summarising things to do: features, bugs, suggestions, etc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sJ5w3UtInPeCvaGTB8CqK1DtgAy39ajQO9qcNFx8vAE/edit?usp=sharing Please contact Chris at with any major problems. Q.. I marked a message as taken on the Freegle app and it went to mod tools but I deleted it as was not sure if it would show. Is it ok to approve if sent from the freegle app? A.Yes Q. What option to download the app would you need on a Windows phone? A Sorry as there are only 3% of phone users use windows, they are not being catered for at present. Freegle Direct 2 The feature on community events to allow repeat events has caused quite a lot of confusion in FD v1, to the extent that some groups have turned it off. In FD v2 It has been changed to make it easier for the user to understand. You can have a look here: http://directv2.ilovefreegle.org/events Other Recent changes: Community Events is pretty much there, including adding new ones. Message posts have search (including multiple words, which didn't used to work), and the various filters from FD v1. Settings should all work now. My Posts, done but some cosmetics needed Lost password added. Help/contact form and unsubscribe pages. The top bar is a bit prettier. You can now see and modify all the settings. The community events sidebar now looks better, is scrollable, and you can click to get more info on an individual event. Filters added to the My Groups section for OFFER/WANTED and message category. Because of time constraints we will have to move over before the end of April month even if it has rough edges, The more testing that happens before then, the better, so please join in. Try it at http://directv2.ilovefreegle.org . See the current status at https://trello.com/b/GuUpwqxW/fd-v2 . Feedback and suggestions welcome. If users want help, please make it really obvious they need to contact their local team of moderators. To do short FAQ page specific to FD with about 10 most asked questions. Trash nothing. We were asked if you could put a personalised footer on as we do on Yahoo and Direct. . Unfortunately this is not possible. It was also pointed out that posts were coming through with nothing in the description box.This is intentional as some members do put everything they want to say in the subject line. Alerts Feature. A moderator pointed out its usefulness as an ancillary spam or illegal items detector. I.E. he has put the word medicine and plasma (and also words like buy and sell ) so gets an email as soon as similar items are posted Q & A. Q.I've noticed that the subject lines of post have been truncated so to find out where someone is you have to click on each post your interested in. Is it a Yahoo issue? A It is just the display, if you hover your pointer over it it does show the whole subject line. In your emails if probably depends on your email provider what displays. Q. I’ve seen this before fairly recently. It happens in a browser signed in to Yahoo mail looking at community event emails when the event description has a lot of text. The table is laid out in such a way that the left column becomes very narrow. I tried to work out what changes would fix it but couldn't work it out. Do you know how you could change it? A No but if when it happens you click the reply button it shows the email correctly. Q. I've got a member who is following the instruction in the 90 day reminder email correctly by "replying to this email" and so is sending a copy of the original message to the group repeatedly and saying what item they need. Even changing the subject line would still involve me manually deleting the previous text. A It does ask them to remember to change the subject line. Some people won't, do it of course but what we're trying to do here is to "wake up" someone who has given up on freegling. We need to make that very easy for them to do, because otherwise they just won't do it. Even clicking on a link is less likely to happen than hitting reply, If they reply and don't change the subject line, and you have to hold their hand a bit to get them reposting, that's actually a success. Whereas instructions which told them to click on something and didn't get a response would be a failure. Q.How do you unban a member? Sorry you can’t anymore you will have to contact Yahoo. Q. When you send a reply to unsuccessful members it gives them your real email address even if you opt to hide it. Can this be changed? A Thanks - I'll look at why that doesn't use your FBUser address. Q. I think moderators need to be able to help with changing delivery settings In the new version of FD. This is a problem that comes up quite often. A This would be beneficial and will be looked at in the new version. Q Can we have an option for members to just select Offers or Wanteds on the digests? A. I would be worried that most people would sign up for only offers, and we would lose the valuable effect of converting those people into givers. We could potentially trial that though. |https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sJ5w3UtInPeCvaGTB8CqK1DtgAy39ajQO9qcNFx8vAE/edit?usp=sharing]]
Please contact Chris at Geeks@ilovefreegle.org with any major problems.
Q.. I marked a message as taken on the Freegle app and it went to mod tools but I deleted it as was not sure if it would show. Is it ok to approve if sent from the freegle app?
A.Yes
Q. What option to download the app would you need on a Windows phone?
A Sorry as there are only 3% of phone users use windows, they are not being catered for at present.
Freegle Direct 2
The feature on community events to allow repeat events has caused quite a lot of confusion in FD v1, to the extent that some groups have turned it off. In FD v2 It has been changed to make it easier for the user to understand. You can have a look here: http://directv2.ilovefreegle.org/events
Other Recent changes:
Community Events is pretty much there, including adding new ones.
Message posts have search (including multiple words, which didn't used to work), and the various filters from FD v1.
Settings should all work now.
My Posts, done but some cosmetics needed
Lost password added.
Help/contact form and unsubscribe pages.
The top bar is a bit prettier.
You can now see and modify all the settings.
The community events sidebar now looks better, is scrollable, and you can click to get more info on an individual event.
Filters added to the My Groups section for OFFER/WANTED and message category.
Because of time constraints we will have to move over before the end of April month even if it has rough edges, The more testing that happens before then, the better, so please join in. Try it at http://directv2.ilovefreegle.org . See the current status at https://trello.com/b/GuUpwqxW/fd-v2 . Feedback and suggestions welcome. If users want help, please make it really obvious they need to contact their local team of moderators.
To do short FAQ page specific to FD with about 10 most asked questions.
Alerts Feature.
A moderator pointed out its usefulness as an ancillary spam or illegal items detector. I.E. he has put the word medicine and plasma (and also words like buy and sell ) so gets an email as soon as similar items are posted
Trash nothing.
We were asked if you could put a personalised footer on as we do on Yahoo and Direct. . Unfortunately this is not possible. It was also pointed out that posts were coming through with nothing in the description box.This is intentional as some members do put everything they want to say in the subject line.
Q & A.
Q.I've noticed that the subject lines of posts have been truncated so to find out where someone is you have to click on each post your interested in. Is it a Yahoo issue?
A It is just the display, if you hover your pointer over it it does show the whole subject line. In your emails if probably depends on your email provider what displays.
Q. Sometimes in a browser signed in to Yahoo mail when looking at community event emails with a lot of text; the table is laid out in such a way that the left column becomes very narrow. I tried to work out what changes would fix it but couldn't work it out. Do you know how you could change it?
A No but if /when it happens and you click the reply button it shows the email correctly.
Q. I've got a member who is following the instruction in the 90 day reminder email correctly by "replying to this email" and so is sending a copy of the original message to the group repeatedly and saying what item they need. Even changing the subject line would still involve me manually deleting the previous text.
A It does ask them to remember to change the subject line. Some people won't, do it of course but what we're trying to do here is to "wake up" someone who has given up on freegling. We need to make that very easy for them to do, because otherwise they just won't do it. Even clicking on a link is less likely to happen than hitting reply, If they reply and don't change the subject line, and you have to hold their hand a bit to get them reposting, that's actually a success. Whereas instructions which told them to click on something and didn't get a response would be a failure.
Q.How do you unban a member?
Sorry you can’t anymore you will have to contact Yahoo.
Q. When you send a reply to unsuccessful members it gives them your real email address even if you opt to hide it. Can this be changed?
A Thanks - I'll look at why that doesn't use your FBUser address.
Q. I think moderators need to be able to help with changing delivery settings In the new version of FD. This is a problem that comes up quite often.
A This would be beneficial and will be looked at in the new version.
Q Can we have an option for members to just select Offers or Wanteds on the digests?
A. I would be worried that most people would sign up for only offers, and we would lose the valuable effect of converting those people into givers. We could potentially trial that though.
Tech Report
March 2015
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