[HCoop-Discuss] RFC: Subscribing new members to help and discussion lists by default?

[Clinton Ebadi]

Greetings,

It came to my attention, after a new hcoop member's post was held for
approval to hcoop-discuss, that we have not been adding people by
default to these lists for ... oh, the last *six years*. Which probably
explains their pitifully low participation rate, especially since it
seems nowadays folks don't like clicking around our beloved portal to
find the "Preferences" page... (hell, even I had to sit there for a
minute to remember where you set list prefs).

I vaguely recall there may have been a reason... a few folks complaining
about list traffic? But checking the subscriber list, it looks like
almost none of our members from the last few years have bothered
subscribing to any of the optional lists!

So, my current thinking is that we should instead subscribe everyone by
default to -discuss and -help, leaving a note in
https://wiki.hcoop.net/MemberManual/GettingStarted/AccountCreated about
*un*subscribing after signing up if the member cares, rather than
subscribing... something about the relative worth of forgiveness and
permission.

I like it for another reason -- any new member that complains about
receiving unwanted list traffic can be easily diverted back to
AccountCreated, whereas the new member who didn't suffer reading our
lengthy introductory material and now suffers in silence cannot. Also
something or other about community building or whatever the hep cats
call it.

Another, possibly friendlier option: we can also just *invite* new
members to join the discussion and help lists, leaving them free to take
no action and also receive no mail while still making them aware the
lists exist. The major downside I see is that the invite is not very
descriptive -- the subject is "confirm $hash" where hash is a very long
hex string, and a test send to gmail ended up in their "special offers"
folder that they are using to spam gmail users now... (on the bright
side, it looks like they don't flag our announcements and whatnot as
spam any more! Go SPF records!) so, I think there's a big chance it
would be ignored. Forced subscription also sends out a notification, so
...

Thoughts? I think it is a big enough change that I hope at least someone
has thoughts that disagree with mine (given that I sort-of disagree with
even myself, already)! Or agrees, whatever. Just as long as I am not
making decisions like this in an echo-chamber (I hear we're
democratically organized).

If I see no serious opposition I am leaning toward going forward with
subscribing new members whenever we have our next member sign up, and
also sending a message to -announce reminding everyone to check their
list subscriptions because they could be missing out.

-- 
"Karen loved animals. Unfortunately the cheetahs betrayed her trust,"
Libot said.
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