Post in Being Invited to Join a Group

2007 Sep 25 09:50 UTC

The Invite Friends page does make the process harder if we show it to the user
before the group; whatever the technical aspects are,¹ I believe that a user
will consider the group "joined" when he or she can access it as a full member,
and the nag-page gets in the way of that.

An Invite facility exists for two reasons. For a public group that allows
anyone to join, the invitation step allows the invited user to skip the email
verification step of registration
  http://groupserver.org/r/topic/7ojOA069zPQquIRZrWzpmR
As we know that the user has control of the address (he or she received the
invitation). For a private² or secret³ group, an invitation will allow the user
to join *at* *all*.

1. Under the new system, the user has joined a public group as soon as
   his or her email address has been verified. This occurs just before
   the password is set
     http://groupserver.org/r/topic/7ojOA069zPQquIRZrWzpmR

2. A private group is one where a user can see that the group exists,
   but not the posts, even when he or she is not logged in. To see the
   posts, the user must be a member of the private group.

3. A secret group is one where a user *must* be a logged in member of
   the group to see the existence of the group and its posts.