Dudley Dix
Cyrus Jordan
Google recently changed the operations of their Google Groups resource. As one of the three site managers (Ron and Dudley being the other two) I've volunteered to assume some minimal required site administration. To date, the changes have had little impact on site’s principle utility as a forum for asking questions, getting input and sharing knowledge, experiences and photos. The changes are primarily limited to how postings are stored and catalogued for retrieval. The intent of this posting is simply to explain how the site operates and give a bit of insight to some of its quirkiness.
The principle 2020 change by Google was to catalogue postings by “Conversations,” rather than by the former "Categories."
Conversations - Members can join an ongoing conversation by replying to it or start a new conversation using the icon at the top left of the screen. Conversations are listed chronologically. There are currently 117.
Reply to all versus Reply to Author- Reply to author” sends an email to the last contributor of the conversation only. “Reply to All” sends an email to all members.
Searches -There are two ways to search the postings for information - 1) Using the Google search engine provided at the top of the screen. One can search for any word in headings or body of message. One can also search by posting date, member name or vessel name; and 2) using the Conversation Labels. Conversations can be searched by the assigned Labels. Conversations can have multiple labels.
Labels- Labeling is principally useful as a method to search the site for information. Presently a site manager must label conversations after they are posted. Formerly, a member could post to a chosen Category. The automated transition from cataloguing message strings as Categories to Conversations resulted in multiple Conversations carrying the same label, e.g. there are 25 Conversations labeled Photos and 21 labeled as Hull.
The current set of labels mirrors the original Categories and the principal recent topics discussed by members. Any and all suggestions for new Labels, revisions to current Labels or how Conversations are labeled are welcome. New labels can be generated. Conversations can be relabeled. Conversations cannot be merged nor deleted.
The site seems to serving everyone well as we are all currently using it. Thank you, Dudley, for creating the resource, and thank everyone else for their contributions.
Cy Jordan Vermont USA