Revised membership acceptance procedure

[Simon Haslam]

Just to let you know that Chris and I have revised the membership
procedure recently.

Following on from the survey earlier this year (about versions of
JDeveloper, the type of ADF development etc) we have been asking all
new members to complete this survey. It would appear that some people
need more encouragement to do this, so we now stipulate on the join-up
message that all prospective members should complete this short
questionnaire before their membership will be approved. There are only
9 questions (all bar one are tick boxes) and given that all members
are expected to be using, or at least very seriously considering, ADF
it doesn't seem too arduous in our opinion.

Once a member, as Chris has done historically too, we also ask that
you post a short public statement about what you're hoping to get from
the group - like the conversation you might have when meeting new
people. I'm sure this is of interest to other members of the group.

Note that the survey results are treated in confidence and not passed
to Oracle or any third party. If you haven't put a meaningful name on
your Google account please also put your email address in the name
field on the survey so that we can tie it up.

Final point: quite a lot of members have Google mail accounts. If you
don't have one, don't feel you have to create a Google mailbox
specifically for this group - Google allows you to create an account
using an existing work or webmail email account (this is what I did)
and seems to obscure the address from spammers.

Periodically we'll summarise and publish the survey results so that
members get a better idea of what other people are using and to help
us the direct the group.

-Simon

[Chris Muir]

For member's who have signed up for this group under a Google account
and would like the emails instead forwarded to a different email
address, this can be done by:

1) Log into gmail.google.com with your Google account
2) Top right of Gmail click on Settings
3) Select the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab in the main display
4) Modify the Forwarding options to post to your preferred account.

Cheers,

CM.

[Simon Haslam]

There were a few people requesting membership who hadn't got round to
completing the short survey despite my reminder emails so I've just
deleted their membership requests. If you were one of those potential
members, you are welcome to apply again but please make sure you
complete the survey first as per the join-up message - it's not rocket
science!

-Simon

[Simon Haslam]

A quick update on this:

About half of the membership requests we're receiving now don't have
the survey completed. I can't understand this - unless something's not
working there's a very clear message that you need to complete the
survey. For these people I have manually been sending them an email
with the "please fill in the survey" message (http://groups.google.com/
group/adf-methodology/web/pending-member---survey-required-email-
template)... but they still don't seem to. Therefore I assume that
they either can't read or don't want to fill in the simple survey.

Therefore if you have applied to join the group and haven't been
granted membership it is becuase you haven't filled in the survey (or
else I haven't been able to tie up your survey name from a cryptic
email address). From now on I don't think I'm going to waste time
sending out email reminders - please complete the survey before/when
you request membership.


Simon