I realise storage space is the core concern here, however I would like to point out another issue that should also be addressed at the same time.
If the new payment structure of groups.io is moving to a pay per member for large groups may I suggest the membership is thinned to those active in the group, this may help solve some of the other issues as well.
Currently there are 4,379 Members in this group, Using 204 MB for files storage, 1.0 MB for attachments storage, 924 MB for photos storage. Over the last 18 years there has been on average 820 posts per year, and this drops to average of 368 over the last 5 years. That makes this a very low usage group yet a lot of storage.
In comparison, the Boxford lathe group I'm also on, has only 286 Members, Using 196 MB for files storage, 185 MB for attachments storage, 520 MB for photos storage. Over the last 12 months there has been 1821 posts. The big difference is they culled a lot of un-needed stuff when they transitioned from Yahoo-Groups and aren't having a storage issue.
I can't remember but I think they made everyone sign up for a new account on groups.io rather than just transfer them over.
My recommendations are as follows:
1. Force all members to rejoin the group, this will get rid of 80-90% of people that no longer have an interest here, they can always rejoin later if they need to access information.
2. As recommended in another post, aggressively purge/re-size the files and photos areas. Having a quick look, there are photos in there that are 3.5 MB in size that would be fine at 150-200kb to understand the detail being presented. I downloaded the files and photos sections at the change over to groups.io from yahoo groups so if you accidentally delete something you feel should be up there I probably still have it and can add it back.
The group is a great resource of information, I'm happy to chip in $ to keep access to it, I would rather we cut back the additional fluff so the group can operate at the lowest cost though. May I also suggest consider getting a company to sponsor the group.io costs, Henry from Rong Fu Industrial may be interested in helping with this. Having a sponsor is no different than being blasted by advertising in "free" Facebook groups (which I advise against as they aren't suitable for the function of this group).
Thanks.
Steve (NZ)
