I’ve been using the Nonsuch Google Groups for the past 12 months, and while there are hidden treasures within this 10-year-old group, I notice a few challenges we all face.
Firstly, many questions get asked repeatedly, and every time a new thread starts, there’s no threading or category feature like you find on platforms such as Slack or Circle.
Secondly, sharing pictures and videos is quite cumbersome in this Google Groups setup.
Thirdly, there is no real-time chat feature available for communication between members.
Lastly, there is no mobile app, which means we have to log in on our laptops every time.
I propose considering a move to a newer platform like https://circle.so/ to enhance our collaboration as a community. I’ve been using this platform across three different communities and am very pleased with the overall quality of interactions.
This improvement is largely due to the ability to manage different categories for various issues. For instance, we can have separate threads for topics like mast-related discussions, electricals, wishbone, sail trimming, and so on. What do you all think?
It costs about $90/mo for the platform, but could help us manage the community powered data better.
Siva Surendira
Inner Peace NS26C #42
Liberty Landing Marina
Jersey City, NJ
Here is how the platform looks (from another community I am part of). I am not trying to step over the line here. Just suggesting something that may improve our overall community experience.
You left out my biggest problem with Google groups: I generally get my messages delivered by email, but for the last 6 months or so many of them have not been delivered. (And no, they are not in the spam folder.) And sometimes my replies are dropped, too. So I have to go to the group page in a browser every now and then to see what I’m missing.
Thanks for the suggestion, Siva. There’s no doubt that something other than Google Groups would be much better. Although I’m not familiar with Circle.so, I am on a lot of other ‘Forum’ style sites that are organized into topics. The linked threads are also easier to follow. There’s lots of examples out there, but I’m not familiar with setting one up.
I’d like to propose that we use this thread for others to suggest other platforms they are aware of that we could look at as potentials. If anything is within the Google Workspace options of apps that are available, that could be economically ideal. I’m also looking for anyone who might want to volunteer to help with the technical aspects, since that will be a big part of a new initiative.
Looking forward to hearing from you all -
Bob Gehrman
President
International Nonsuch Association
I know that this is not perfect, but as we all know, it has grown and grown, so it can’t be that terrible. Yes, some of my incoming Form messages wind up in my trash folder, but that’s my Gmail problem. I’m quite happy as it is since the emails come in as emails and I don’t have to go anywhere to find them.
Joe Valinoti
S/V iL Gatto NS30U #221
Sea Harbour YC
Oriental, NC USA
Siva
I get this platform on my iPad and I doubt anyone is going to want to change platforms at this stage. I may be wrong but I don’t think I am.
All the best with Inner Peace over the winter.
When I was co-President, I worked with a few members who had similar objections to Google’s Discussion Group.
One of the big problems that we ran into at the time was that, in addition to the cost of the non-free alternatives, there are also a few hidden costs. The most significant were:
The effort of retention and re-use of the existing body of information
The training effort to get a community ranging in age across 4-5 decades familiar with new tech
The effort required from what is, frankly, a relatively small group of volunteers willing and able to moderate and better organize the discussion threads
I’m deeply unthrilled with Google, and would be happy to move.
I’d love to hear suggestions about how these hidden costs can be addressed before we make any leaps, though.
It’s always smart to welcome volunteer enthusiasm and ideas. Also good to consider all options when contemplating changes.
I don’t see Google Groups as being “broken”, just a little tired. I suggest we explore other possibilities for enhancing NonSuch collaboration and continue to use Google Groups for now… after all “it’s the devil we know”.
Soave provides me with satisfactory ROI ( you have to really like sailing and tinkering to say that with a straight face ) , the community of other NonSuch sailors is part of the benefit Soave offers me.
IMHO, the platforms and technologies we choose are the NOT secret sauce behind the success of our NonSuch community. It’s the willingness of members of our community to serve and support each other. There are some super generous volunteers helping to organize, moderate, and support the community.
I’ll follow these volunteers to whatever platform they choose or stick with Google Groups for now.
I also think we should recognize other benefits INA provides, and contemplate our next steps for supporting our community.
Past successes…
The new owners guide was produced by a small group and shared with the community. It is very helpful.
Swim platforms and tank replacement programs add value to the community.
Resurrection of the rendezvous this year is a great move.
Newfound camaraderie among Western LIS NonSuch sailors is already yielding dividends for NonSuch Owners.
The diesel workshop was both informative and social.
What’s next… who knows… perhaps.
More in person events ?
Winter storage and cover options explored in detail?
A coherent summary of propulsion options ?
Updated information about corrosion remediation and prevention ?
Changes in battery technology and power management ?
Thanks again to the many dedicated volunteers that built and maintained this community that we can all enjoy.
Tired/limited is a good assessment of Google Groups. In a previous life, I worked thru four software/hardware conversions/migrations and survived. That was three too many… I thought all that was behind me…
This is a great group, but it is clear that we are resorting to add-on pieces and work-arounds to supplement what is lacking in GG. Some investigation last evening revealed a few more complete and versatile “community” apps - it’s a classic case of weighing the pain and cost of getting there against the benefits of being there.
A small digression - in look around, the Discourse application seems to be a lower cost and actively used application with a collection of nice features. While poking around there, I read thru a discussion thread about migration - it covered ten years of people’s efforts to move email based discussions onto that platform. It is clearly doable, but the effort and pitfalls gave me pause. In GG we have almost 6,000 threads, so we can ballpark that as 60-70K emails. That’s not huge, but not trivial. (cool beans, this app has a little bit of AI that can summarize the threads).
A suggestion - a small group should draw up a list of desirable features, split into “very important” and “nice to have”. We can work on these lists within this group (creating a bunch of noise but increasing participation), or on the side until we have a basic idea of what is possible/desirable. (Oops, I wrote “we”). Actually, this needs to start with some guidance from the people now dedicating their time and effort into maintaining the INA web site and GG group. IMHO we should undertake these efforts with the understanding that overall guidance needs to come from the INA leadership but a minimal increase in time and effort should be asked of them.
As a starting point, it would be useful to know how many people just use email to access the discussions vs. those that primarily see the discussions via the GG forum layout. If we are primarily an email based group and that reflects our skill level, changing platforms becomes a heavy lift…
A bit of background on the Discussion Group for what it’s worth
In the late 90’s AOL list serve hosted our discussions and announced they were closing up. They did give a years notice. After some research there were two options. Yahoo and Google. Google was selected largely due to lack of advertising and the ease of use and administration.
There were other commercial fee based options but the cost did not seem to offer functionality that was of value to the group. It was also felt that the risk of the service ending was higher with paid services than platforms like Yahoo and Google.
Migration off AOL was gradual , we mirrored the conversations to Google for about 8 months before switching over to keep the conversations alive. Were were unable to “save “ past discussions.
There is no doubt some repetition of topics occurs over the years and that will happen no matter what platform is used. New owners ask similar questions rightfully so. But technology has changed, batteries are a good example as lead acid gave way to gel, then AGM then lithium…. So there is some value in revisiting topics. The recent project to create a New Owners Guide and Best Practises Guide has gone a long way to bridge the gap between “discussion” and updated guidance. Keeping those documents up to date should be reasonably easy to accomplish.
Like all volunteer groups there are limited resources and skills at hand. Past boards have managed this challenge and I am sure the current Board will come to the right conclusion.
As for the email vs using the platform , an uneducated guess is 95% use email.
Yes, I use email - mostly. And if Google would actually deliver all messages to and from me, I would personally have no other complaints about Google Groups. I know they are messing with our messages because I posted a question a few months ago and only received two answers. When I went to the group page I saw that many answers had been posted. They were not in my trash or spam folders. Not only had Google delivered only two of them to me, it had failed to deliver others and had apparently even deleted three or four of them for some reason, including one which had been delivered to me. That one had no spam or otherwise illicit content, so I don’t know why all the deletions. I’ve also posted replies but never saw my postings. Going to the group I don’t see them there, either. Double-checking my sent folder shows that I really did send them. And blah, blah, blah. It’s annoying, but I do like how it works when it works correctly.
This seemed to start only recently. Software is always being altered - sometimes referred to as “upgraded” - and sometimes new defaults slip in without notice. I wonder if Google Groups started some sort of spam or content filtering without telling our administrator. There might even be a new spam-checker click-box option in the group setup page which needs to be checked or unchecked or something…
Discourse is a good option, too. I am exploring Google Appsheet. It can sit on Google Groups. This may allow many of us to use Google Groups ‘as-is’ but can also give an option to access images, threads. I will explore this a bit more.
Thanks, but I actually said (or meant to say) that they are not ending up in my spam folder. Nor are they ending up in my trash folder, somehow. I’ve checked both quite a few times. They are not even getting to my computer at all. It’s possible that they are being blocked somewhere else along the line, but my email service provider has told me that they do not do any spam filtering. I think I was told that others have had similar experiences. And those deleted messages in the thread on the Google Groups site, itself, sort of corroborate my suspicions that Google is doing it. Why, I have no idea.
I looked at Discourse. It looks good and they apparently try hard to help move all old threads over. But they are relatively new, I think, so we don’t know what will happen when some larger company buys them up. (It happened to groups.com …) And I suspect that they are too expensive. They have a $20/month plan which I think is about $20/Month more than we are currently paying. But the “standard” plan is $100/mo. and I somehow suspect that the entry level plan will somehow turn out to be inadequate or lacking in some feature which we value.
Brian,
Who is your email server for Wildbirdshop.com? They could have a spam filter that pre-filters your emails before they even get to you. Another possibility is there’s a limit on your inbox size. Perhaps you should contact your email service provider.
Don
I think it’s a useful clue that some group participants receive email notifications from the google groups server and some do not.
Spoiler alert… It is a “holy grail” to think that emails sent “on behalf” of a user whose domain is not controlled by the email server will be delivered 100% of the time. 90% maybe … but not 100%. This is kinda a dig against the email server hosting Wildbirdshop.com.
Awkward ( somewhat dated ) explanation below…
If you notice some of the email notifications we get from GG come from " googlegroups.com" while of the notifications come from “the participant’s email viagooglegroups.com”
For the notifications sent “via googlegroups.com” there is a bit of SMTP trickery being used. GG server is creating headers with a “from:” address that has a domain that is different from the domain of the server. In the case of the example above surend.siva@gmail.com looks like it came from Siva’s email server “google.com”. it was actually sent from googlegroups.com.
This is where the plot thickens… about 20 years ago we recognized that spoofing was becoming a problem and we had to protect users from “bad actors” who impersonate others for some less than noble purpose. The result is there are several protocols for “authenticating” emails.
Some that are common today are : SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
Looking at the header of the email that was sent to Siva…
This particular email failed two of the three authentication tests, but gmail accepted it because it passed the SPF test. It is possible that Wildbirdshop.com’s email servers haven’t implemented all three authentication methods or they have set a higher standard for approval of emails sent “on behalf” of another user.
This relates to our platform selection process in that newer platforms are designed to get the job done without getting tripped up in the murky email authentication standards.
