Google Groups extra signature

This is for people who administer Google Groups in the MV community and elsewhere. I’ve been noticing over the last few months that emails I get from forums have two “unsubscribe” notifications. In the case of the MVDBMS group which I manage, I know I didn’t cause that, so something else did. Here’s how you fix it.

This is what I mean. Here’s what was being sent in emails from MVDBMS:

—
You received this message because you are subscribed to
the “Pick and MultiValue Databases” group.
To post, email to: moc.spuorgelgoognull@smbdvm
To unsubscribe, email to: moc.spuorgelgoognull@ebircsbusnu+smbdvm
For more options, visit http://groups.google.com/group/mvdbms
—
To post to this group, send email to moc.spuorgelgoognull@smbdvm
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to moc.spuorgelgoognull@ebircsbusnu+smbdvm
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/forum/mvdbms?hl=en
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out?hl=en

Sure enough, Google made changes recently which reset default flags. For groups that have a custom signature, this adds another signature to the bottom of all emails sent from the groups.

But most of the groups that send me email still have extra text. It seems apparent that most managers don’t know and/or don’t care about it.

If you see the above in your groups, feel free to pass a link to this blog entry to group administrators.

And I do care, so here’s how to fix the problem:

1. From your group main page, click the “Manage” link. In the left-pane navigation you’ll see Settings.
2. Click that to reveal “Email options”.
3. Click that to get options to change the Email Footer.

The are 5 checkboxes:

• Display how to post to this group by email.
• Display how to unsubscribe from this group by email.
• Display Pick and MultiValue Databases’s group webpage URL.
• Display the Google Groups opt-out URL.
• Add custom footer text.

For MVDBMS I provided each of the lines via the “Add custom footer text”, in a format which is short, doesn’t wrap around, makes a little more sense than their default text, etc. I don’t see a need to leave the first four options checked if I’m actually providing all info myself. So I don’t want that extra block at the bottom at all. My solution is to un-check the first four.

If you don’t provide custom footer text, then you really should have all of those other boxes checked so that your users understand their options. If you only include some of the information, then you should consider leaving the others.

In summary, eliminate that extra text at the bottom of your Google Groups notifications – go check those options.