Guidelines & Help

Rev. 2023-04-01

Welcome to the Ice Age Farmer's solutions-oriented groups & topics, where we discuss and share about all aspects of homesteading. All the of the groups have specific topics, and a general discussion area. Please, observe the correct group and topic for your thread, and thread your responses by replying to the previous post (tap, click Reply) so the member will see your response and be notified - Your contributions are what make the group have value, and organizing and threading your responses, ensures people can find the information! Likewise, stay on-topic: Groups are moderated. For example: E.G. Don't talk about 4-leggers in chickens: that's what Livestock (@IAF_Goats) is for. See https://t.me/IAF_Resources

Also - ❤️ thank you ❤️ - for taking the time to read these tips, guidelines and help. They are our Terms of Service, organically-derived from repeat issues that members have had. The people that needed to read these the most, were also the type that would avoid reading them, so we had to make them part of the on-boarding quiz; to prevent some ruining it for everyone else! People that complain about rules, simply because they exist, and don't have actual suggestions based on experience or specific ideas, are usually waiting to visit their own tyranny upon you - watch out for those! We do not need them! Most people are new to Telegram, and benefit from reading this document. And if you are completely new to Telegram, then at the bottom of these guidelines there is additional help to get you started! Staff are volunteers, and are proficient homesteaders themselves. They are expected to comply with these rules, the same as an ordinary member: they are a member, plus, Staff; not staff minus a member. Also, if a member does not read this, it works like a No Trespassing sign: if there is a violation, members can be warned, muted or removed, as needed. Do not blurt out in the chat if you are having technical issues. Instead: We will help you, directly in your personal messages / direct messages. How to do that is below. This text, is written and updated, both for your benefit, and for Staff to be able to refer to it: These tips and guidelines are sorted and in a specific order, and are refined over time. If there is are any significant changes, you will see the date updated at the top of this document.

Each IAF Group has it's own daily pinned post, customized to the group, in the # General topic, pinned at the top, containing additional specific assistance and guidelines for that group, with a link to this document. If you cannot see the # General topic pinned at the top, you need to update your Telegram app. And not reading these guidelines, or the one pinned, does not release you from the guidelines. 

Every known effort has been made to direct people to the correct groups & topics. When you see new people join, please, make them feel welcome with a Reaction (👍). If they are simply new to Telegram and don't understand the structure, please help, or direct them to contact a Staff member (see how-to below).

🔎 Search the Chat 🔍 to see first if someone has answered your question. You may have to use "quotes", or you can get poor-quality matches. You can search for a specific user's posts, also. There is an icon that appears, to allow you to search by user. [Search-by-user may be disabled, by the enabled Hide Members option, which prevents DM spam. So sorry if this is not currently available.] Tap it, and start typing the first couple of characters of their First Name or User Name, as it appears in the chat. Choose 'View As Messages', to see the entire chat in a single view.

👀 Look in the Files 👀 section for books 📖. Tap on the title of the group at the top, then tap: Files.

🧵 Thread your responses 🧵 Tap on an existing post, and then tapping 'Reply', will ensure that your comment relates to that conversation, and people can follow it around to add their comment intelligently. The previous poster will get an alert that you replied. They may not notice your comment if you don't Reply!

Please, choose the correct group & topic for your post. Staff does generally not have the time to move off-topic threads, and such posts may get moved, deleted, and you warned - and eventually muted for a time, or banned, if repeated, if you continue to do-so.

How to reach more than 1 group, yet not cross-post: The general rule is:🚫 no cross-posting! 🚫 A cross-post is when you make exactly the same post in two or more groups/topics. If you have a post that should be seen by more than one group or topic: Just tap your original post and choose 'Copy Link'. Paste the link in the second group, and write some additional context applying your original post to why & what context it has in the additional topic/group. [Link previews to your original post, do not work yet with Topics, and that is a Telegram bug, yet to be resolved.] Both sets of members can now reply to your post, and anyone can follow the conversation, and see all member's comments. This keeps all comments threaded back to the original post. With so many members and so much conversational traffic, it's the best way. No one likes Spam! If you feel you post is not getting enough attention, tag a staff member to Pin it. Pinning it will announce it to members. Staff may be able to answer your message directly in the chat, also.

Many groups [update: all groups] have a quiz. It is /not/ a prohibitive knowledge test. It is open-book, to determine if you can read and comprehend instructions, and work on your own. 🚫 No begging for answers: 🚫 They are all available through popular search engines. [Although if there is a technical error, read further to see how to contact staff]. If you do not complete the steps in time, wait - try again 1 minute later. If you try again immediately, you will get 'You have been banned by an administrator.' automated message. That is due to internal Telegram API issues: it takes time to reset your account's status, and, in that time, your account is temporarily banned. It has no effect on your account, otherwise.

🚫 No whining 🚫: Reminding someone to stay on topic of the group, is generally not whining.

🚫 DM spam are scams 🚫: [Due to 2023-01 updates in Telegram, this should not be a problem for our members! However, you may get DM spam from other groups that are not using 'Hide Members'. Encourage your group administrators/owners to turn it on!] Intelligence agencies pay inexpensive Fiver workers to use hundreds of phone to send spam, with easily-identifiable, nearly identical scripts. The purpose is to generate noise and discourage you from using the platform & resources, and make you quit in frustration [see how to adjust your settings below]. They can't directly shutter the platform, and they do not want people doing productive, wholesome things: they don't want you canning, gardening, having lots of children, love, home and living! Until Telegram fixes the issue so that only Contacts can DM you, anyone can DM you on Telegram. The quickest way to deal with them is to Block & Report. DO NOT post in any chat, about getting DM Spam: Talking about it is off-topic, and it is already covered here, and indicates you did not seriously read & heed the guidelines, which will get you at least 1 warning. Staff get the same DM spam you do! [Since the 2023-01 update, usually only Staff gets DM spam!] So, do not interrupt someone else's contribution or waste member's or staff time.

If someone unknown to you, particularly not in any mutual groups, only says "Hi" or "Hello" at first, in your DM's, it's a well-known fishing attempt. Or, if the account pretends to be the group, or channel, or the channel owner. If they claim to be Staff, Staff would have attempted to contact you first in the chat. If in doubt, check to see if there is a message waiting for you in the chat, from Staff. (See how to determine who is Staff, below).

Use the Block & Report option in your client, for DM spam. Your Report goes directly to Telegram's anti-spam filter, and with just a few reports, prohibits the spammer's account from sending DM's to non-contacts, making the account useless to the spammer.

If you're not sure it's an actual staff member: You would have previously received a message sent to you in the group, prior to the DM, tagging you, notifying you to check your DM's. Usually directly from the Staff member's account. Some staff messages will also appear from staff speaking through @IAFHelpBot in the chat. If Staff is contacting you for DM's: find the Staff member in chat, tap their profile photo, tap the Chat button (white chat bubble inside of blue circle), and you should see the same screen with the same private message from the Staff member.

Spammers automatically generate thousands of accounts a day. We are not sure how they are doing it technically, but the uniformity of an obvious script, makes it clear that big fake money of the idiots trying to wreck everything, is involved. Don't let morons who can't get a real job or do useful work, let you down! We rarely get spam in posted in the IAF groups, but if you see it, flag it! Use the tools below to submit confidential reports.

If someone upsets you on here: Step away: Go outside and garden. These groups should augment what you are already doing. If you're generous enough with your time to answer user's questions, patient, convivial, thanks! Deliberate chat sliding? - Report it!

Promotions: Promoting your own chat / channel can be done here: if it is tasteful, and has to do with the topic being discussed, and if you are not interrupting & it fits in somehow with the general subject matter of the group and discussion. You know what spam is; we do not need to explain it to you. Participate in the chat. They are primarily for discussion, sharing, not Johnny one-note self-promotion. If you get an automated Warn, and your post is auto-deleted, the anti-spam filters may be preventing your post: if you are trying to promote yourself, and running into that, tag a staff or admin [see below on how to do that] with an explanation-description of your group or channel. While commercial promotion is tolerated as long as it complies with the previous wording, and we respect your desire to generate income, these are generally non-commercial groups. Also, MLM and other similar schemes, will be removed and result in banning.

While it may be tempting, it is expressly forbidden to abuse the group, e.g. through attention-seeking narcissism or unrelated hype posts. One type of attention-seeking is junk-forwarding, or posting in such a way, to to deliberately agitate users unnecessarily [see chat sliding]. Posts that do, are subject to deletion, and in extreme cases, account banning. Bad behaviors, like negative chat sliding, are is included in this. Don't make us tidy up after you!

Forwarded Messages, Off-topic messages, and Link-Dumping: Do not use any groups as a dumping ground for Forwards: 🗣 Participate in the Discussion.

👀 If you see off-topic posts or off-topic forwarded posts: 👀 Encourage the members to join the correct group, and go to the related topic, to forward their post, and clean it up themselves from the wrong group. You may also report it, using the confidential reporting tools described below. If an admin has to do it, it may result in a warn, etc, depending on the circumstances.

The most common reasons for incidental off-topic Forwards dropping into the group, when it's not frequent link-dumping: is a mistake by the user, due to how the stock Telegram client handles Forwarding. To avoid the mistake, verify your forwards - Do not 'blind forward'. If your intention was to forward it to ABC group, afterwards go there, to ABC group and make sure it's really there. If Staff has to clean it up, you will get a warning. Repeat offenders may be muted or booted for that type of behavior.

We get it: everyone likes dopamine: hug your dog. Take a walk. Your forward should relate to the present conversation and be on-topic for the group.

Contacting Staff: If you need further assistance for something not covered here, you may contact someone in the chat with a title, across from their name in their posts. Just look for the most recent person with a title, who said something. And say, 'Hey, can I DM you?', tagging them. How to get a list of staff?: Send the message '/staff', to the chat; it will disappear, and instead, give you an answer in your DM's, from 👉🏻 @IAFHelpBot 👈🏻. If nothing happens, if no message / list appears, tap 👉🏻 @IAFHelpBot 👈🏻, and if says 'START' at the bottom, tap 'START' [it's a Telegram requirement], (you need to 'start' the bot, just one time, to get the ball rolling, allowing messages from the bot) then do /staff again in the group chat. Beginning at the bottom of the list, you can contact anyone on there. Ignore the different Admin/Muter/Cleaner designations. Just correlate someone on there with recent activity, and tag them in the chat, asking if you can talk with them privately.

As a last-resort option, write a descriptive message, in the chat itself, and add '@ admin' without the space. Send it, and the message is immediately deleted, and a copy is sent to HQ. You will see 'Report Sent': that confirms we have received it. Your message should disappear, but you can delete it manually if you still see it. Probably no-one else will see it, if that happens: it's just an issue with Telegram. Do not send the same message twice in a row! DO include a description of the issue. We see you sent it and when, although the response may not be immediate!

If a warning is issued: There are two types of warnings: Issued by the group management bot (@IAFHelpBot), or Staff. A single warning alone does not affect your use of your account: it's for logging, to keep track of how often it's happening - e.g. if it's a common occurrence; and if action needs to be taken. Warnings issued by @IAFHelpBot expire after 3 days, Staff warnings usually do not. Three (3) Warns accumulated, automatically result in a Mute of 3 days. That gives time, if upon manual review, a reversal of the Warn is needed, to outright Banning from all groups is required, depending on the particulars. We log all administrative activities, including the content being flagged. Whiners will try to manipulate their way back in, as if that is not the case, but records of incidents are kept!

The Guidelines & Help stub, is reposted daily as a silent pin, in the # General chat area for each group. However, beyond that, we have no control over your client notifies you for routine messages: you must set the notifications yourself [see below], because by default, Telegram notifies you urgently, about every message, from every DM, chat & channel. Whether you use Telegram on a new device, or use Telegram for the first time, you have to fix that, by initially checking and correct your settings in the Telegram app.

The daily reposted message is not intended to disturb the chat, but instead, it minimizes the messages you see in the chat when someone joins. By making it a persistent pin, members & Staff can point to it 👆 when a new member has a question already covered in this message. Limitations in how Telegram operates, means this is the best way we currently have, to make sure this information is available. It requires automatic daily re-posting, however the previous message is removed prior to the new one being posted, so you only ever see the latest version: Look at it's revision date, and the preview of this document, that shows this revision date.

IAF Chat groups, unless otherwise stated, are 'open': your comments, including this message, are visible to non-members. To share something to outside of the group, tap on the message and choose 'Copy Link'. Then paste the link in the destination group [Link previews do not currently work]. Or forward it. It also means you can read and search almost all of the groups without being a member, with the exceptions of Homeschooling, and Infants.

For your use and membership, you have 👀read👀 and agree👍 to these terms.

Welcome & Good Morning ☕️ < - Last message for the quiz!

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Tips Section [Bonus material!]

Update your client! You need to be running version 9.5.x on mobile or 4.7.x on desktop, or better, to correctly use topics! At the bottom of this message, will be some current bugs, that we relentlessly nag Telegram about. Check the list.

Join all the groups. The on-boarding quiz is nearly the same for all of them. If you got this far, this is a tip!

You'll need to adjust some things in your client, otherwise Telegram can be really annoying!:
[These instructions are written for android.]

In Settings, Notifications, Turn off notifications for Groups and Channels.
Do not turn off notifications for 'Private Chats'. Instead, tap 'Private Chats', and change Priority to Medium, from 'Urgent'.

Turn off: 'In-App Sounds', 'In-App Vibrate', 'In-App Preview', and 'In-Chat Sounds'.
If your client has a 'Keep-Alive Service', turn that On, turn on 'Background Connections', and set 'Repeat Notifications' to 'Never'.

Settings, Data and Storage, Storage Usage: Set Private Chats to 1 Week, Group Chats to 1 Week, and Channels to 1 Day. You can set these lower [e.g. Group Chats to 1 Day] if your phone has very limited available storage. There is a slider below: move it all the way to the left. If you ever have an issue with messages not being correctly removed, displayed, or topics 'missing' or some other issue similar to that, there is a 'Clear Local Database' option on this screen, on the top-right menu '...': It deletes the local copies of your messages, and re-syncs your client with the Telegram servers.

Go back one screen to the main 'Data and Storage' settings, to 'Automatic Media Download': Set 'When using mobile data' set to only Photos. Same for 'When connected to Wi-Fi'. 'When roaming', turn that off completely ('Disabled'). You can modify these settings, but those are good defaults.

Settings, Privacy & Security: Phone number (visibility): Nobody! Profile Photos & Videos (visibility): Everyone (please do not use a personal photo of your face!), or, there is an option to use a different profile photo for the public, for non-contacts. We may require a profile photo in the future [again, not of your face, but of something unique so we can tell the 15 people with the same name, in the chat, apart from each other.]

Forwarded messages / message privacy: either My Contacts or Nobody.

Calls: My Contacts.

(Who can add me to) Groups & Channels: My Contacts [This STOPS unknown people from adding you to Crypto spam chats and channels without your approval. Unfortunately, this is set to Everybody by default for new Telegram users.]

Settings, Chat Settings: Message Text Size: Slide this to between 19 to 21. The default font size is 12, and WAY too small to read for most people! [This default may have been improved to 16 in more current versions of the Telegram client.]

Those above tips cover the basic settings for Telegram clients. You will have to set most of them again, if you get a new phone or device.

Current bugs: Performance issues. Exit out of the client, then open it back up. This seems to affect both the mobile and desktop clients. [Seems to be resolved]

Preview links to messages in topics do not display. This is a bug with Telegram's preview-generation. Just type a short explanation of the post you are linking to, so people have some context.

View As Messages: If you want to display the entire group's messages in a single column, there is a View As Messages option. However, it does not 'default' to this view. We are pushing Telegram to make this a user-selectable default.

Pinning Topics: You should have the choice of what topics you want to 'pin', and in what order. If you do not have Folders turned-on in your client yet, do it: you can organize favorites list (like one for all IAF groups), and order the groups how you want to see them. Topics should behave the same way, with the other topics in the group 'floating' in the order of activity, below. Currently, the feature as-described does not exist.

Those are just some of the issues directly affecting you, that we are aware of. An exhaustive list would take up twice as much space! ON THE WHOLE: Topics enhances the group experience, even with the bugs and inconveniences. Look to it to improve over the next several months. Keep your client updated!

Revised 2023-04-01