Some of you know that I “admin” for several groups. Two of them, especially, have been in the news frequently lately and I’ve been sending out quite a few Invitations to Join those groups. There is power in numbers, especially “knowledgeable numbers.” Groups dedicated to a particular subject are the very best way to stay up-to-the-minute informed about that subject on Daily Kos.
Long story made shorter, thanks to Gwennedd, I’ve found out that the invitations no longer go to the person’s Daily Kos inbox (the way it’s been ever since I’ve known anything about it — maybe as long as 17 years). Instead, NOW the invitations go to the e-mail address that the person used to sign up for Daily Kos, regardless of how many years ago that was. Worse, this change was made without telling the Group Admins!!!!
This is not the first time I’ve suspected that someone in DK’s power structure (someone not very high up, who doesn’t have the authority to do it) would actually like to see the Groups dry up and blow away.
The one good thing so far is that my query to the Help Desk about this was answered with a nice and knowledgeable reply. I think this person is new because back in the days (a year or so ago) of the Help Desk being something available for all to read, the staff there seemed to avoid saying anything technical and, thus, talked down to us.
I’m publishing it in full here:
Hello, and thanks for asking.
I'm happy to clarify.
Group invitations no longer get sent via Kosmail. They are sent out to the email of record for a user's Daily Kos site account--which might well be the original email listed at creation. But it might be different if the user changed it somewhere along the way. Only the user will know whether that email is up to date; group admins do not see that email address at all.
It is possible to verify/change/update one's email of record quite easily. While logged in, one may access one's own Edit [my] Profile page, where there is a field to enter a different email address if necessary. Please keep in mind that being on the Daily Kos Recommended list and receiving those emails regularly says nothing about whether that email is associated with a Daily Kos site username. They're completely independent systems.
It's still possible, however, for an invited group user to accept the invitation even if that invitee does not have access to the relevant email account (emphasis added). To do so, the invitee needs to visit a particular subpage of the group, one where the group's profile page URL has /join appended to the end. I'll use one of yours to illustrate. If someone invited to the Pro Choice group visits this page https://www.dailykos.com/groups/Pro%20Choice/join while logged in then the acceptance modal will appear and the invitation process will be completed.
At that point, you or another group admin will be able to change the new member's role, or not, as you prefer. But please note that any group status changes are also no longer announced via Kosmail; that information is now only available on the group's profile page (or through the individual's list of group memberships and roles within each).
Hope this helps.
Thanks for your long-time support of the site.
Granted, I’m going to have to experiment with that subpage for other groups, specifically I need to create a URL in that format that works but goes to Kos Canucks and Friends
https://www.dailykos.com/groups/Kos%20Canucks/join <--doesn’t work
On the other hand, that link to the Pro Choice group that he/she posted doesn’t seem to bring up anything that applies to this problem
Meanwhile,
NOW YOU KNOW!
