aten forum email notifications

[HeresTomWithTheWeather]

the following is the content of an email i sent to the info list 3 months ago after the system upgrade. now that this tech list exists, it seems i should try resending it here as it is related to the communications dynamic among members of ATEN and there isn't a clear decision that i'm willing to make by myself: 

"one thing that isn't obvious is the forum email notification defaults.  originally, there was just one forum and by default email notifications for the main forum were off for new registrations.  people could turn it on by editing their profile but the vast majority didn't.  today, that profile setting no longer exists as the old main forum is associated with a default group.  if you want to change your email notification preference for a group forum, you do that with the "Edit your preferences" link for that group.  the main point is that for people who registered before the software upgrade, we're honoring the email notification preference that was in their profile.  

however, from now on, when people join groups, the default group forum email notification setting is turned on only because i haven't written any extra code to make the default email notification setting of the default group behave differently than the other groups which are on by default.  it seems it would be worthwhile to display a transient message to people visiting a forum that their email notifications are off to remind them that the feature exists if they wish to turn it on.

obviously, these are policy decisions that aren't set in stone.  they can be easily changed for new members.  for existing members, it's not so easy."

[Amanda Jones]

I think it's time for an email update to all members about website features that they may not know about, like this and the other improvements that have been recently made.  I don't know if we need to say anything more complicated than "Check out the "Edit your preferences" button." or whatever.

--
http://amandahbjones.wordpress.com
http://austintimeexchange.org

[HeresTomWithTheWeather]

the board typically sends out a broadcast email message once a month.  it's fire and forget.  a concern i have is that recipients don't pay much attention to these email updates. personally, i'm on many organizational email lists. i don't pay much attention to any of these emails because they are not part of a conversation.  i do pay careful attention to communications that i can respond to.

so, as far as participation goes, the messages posted to the forum are far more useful than the monthly broadcast messages.  they are conversations but, in general, everyone who registered before march 2011 (the vast majority of members) do not receive notifications of the messages.  people who registered after march 2011 do receive notifications.

for instance, it is clearly a good practice that notice of board meeting minutes is posted to the main forum.  the idea is that people will be informed and can comment on the decisions made.  however, the vast majority of the membership are not included in this notification, therefore, unless they happen to log into the site and notice the forum post, they will not have the opportunity to participate in this conversation.

it seems like a no-brainer that if we could go back in time to the beginning, enabling email notifications for the forum as the default setting would have been a better policy (it's the policy we're using now for new members and none have complained).  people can turn it off if it is too much.

however, switching everyone to forum notifications without their consent is almost certainly not a good idea.

we've recently had conversations about imposing a cost for inactive accounts.  one thing we could do is have a policy that if you haven't logged into the site in a certain time period (6-12 months perhaps), your account is disabled/expired.  you will receive a notification when your account is disabled and there is an easy, automated form to reactivate, but when reactivated, you receive notifications by default (the policy for new memberships) and you can, of course, easily change the setting to turn off forum notifications.

cheers,

tom

[Amanda Jones]

Hi Tom...

I just now got to the place where your final paragraph reached my consciousness!

I think that's a good idea.  I think 12 months is better than 6 months.  And I agree that Forum Post Notifications are important (but I still don't think that there should be notification for the creation of a Forum Topic... Post notifications are enough).

I've been thinking also about how maybe with inactive accounts, the credit balance can just be scooped up and given back to ATEN.  I wouldn't want that to happen automatically after 12 months of inactivity, though.  Maybe there should be one or two warning emails first. 

?
Amanda

[HeresTomWithTheWeather]

sounds good. the issue you opened regarding announcements for topic creation is still open:

https://github.com/oscurrency/oscurrency/issues/106

for those following this thread, topic creations get announced on the activity stream but email notifications are not sent for topic creation, only post creation.

maybe the following can be put on the agenda for the next board meeting:

* consider disabling an account after 12 months of inactivity. in this case, an email notification of deactivation will be sent to the disabled account with a link to a simple button to restore the account. terms of account restoration will include that notification preference for ATEN forum will be reset to true but can easily be turned off.

in regards to crediting ATEN with positive balances from in active members, another consideration includes: ATEN's account should also get deducted with negative balances of inactive members. otherwise, it would be easy to manipulate the system. "extinguished" is preferred to "given back" to clarify that the credits did not originate with ATEN.

cheers,

tom

[Amanda Jones]

Hi Tom,

So, to clarify-- I'm looking at the edit profile page.  Under Notifications I see Messages and Wall Posts.  Where is Forum posts?  Or would that be the same as Wall posts?

[Tom Brown]

Since a person has many group forums and may wish to have different preferences for each group, the settings link is found under the home tab for that group. It's one of the links under the group image. Maybe it is more intuitive to put all of these per-group forum notification settings under the person's profile instead - a checkbox for each forum?
-tom

[Amanda Jones]

Hmm.. That might be good... 
I was about to explain in the e-news how to turn on Forum notifications.  Maybe I should just tell them how to do it with the way it's set up now? 

[Tom Brown]

Emails from group forum posts include a link at the bottom to where preference for the forum can be changed but you've identified a problem in that system newsletter email contains no such link, of course, since it is not associated with a group.

If we intend to change the ui, maybe we can punt this issue until next month to reduce confusion. I can easily change the ui before the next month. If we don't intend to change ui, then go for it with the current "home" instructions.
-tom

On Jul 30, 2011 2:25 PM, "Amanda Jones" <collect...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Amanda Jones]

Yeah, I don't want to cause confusion.  I don't know that anyone else has been confused about this but me, so maybe we shouldn't change it? I will just tell people how it works now, and hopefully if it ever changes in the future, it will just be so intuitive that no explanation will be needed. ;-)

Once we get some more things settled, I want to see the "help" tab actually containing some help on how to use the website (site map?).  But that's another project/thread...

(ui= user interface?)

[Tom Brown]

sounds good! yes, correctomundo!

-tom

[Tom Brown]

i didn't see the other thread until just now.  to clarify, when i referred to "ui" i meant just the forum email notification preference user interface.

-tom

[Tom Brown]

an alternative to embedding this info into e-news would be to selectively send a specific email with this info.  it's easy to have an email sent only to those people that matter in this case: registered before 3/2011 AND have forum notifications turned off AND have logged into the system in the last year (assuming those accounts will be disabled as we have been considering). this way, we reduce the burden on the majority of people who don't need to see this and there will be a better response rate for the people who do since they are getting a specific email with a specific subject.

-tom