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

[Jesse Shumway]

nudge - to coax or gently encourage, to touch or push, to prod gently, typically with one's elbow.

Make a sytem's default the behavior you wish to encourage… so sign 'em up!

-- Jesse Shumway

On Jul 24, 2013, at 7:35 PM, Sebastian Fernandez Giraldo <granito at hcoop.net> wrote:

> Haha as the person who's post was held up I vote for auto-subscription with a large "unsubscribe" button at the bottom of emails. It could also be a mix of certain lists are auto-subscribe and some are not.
> 
> Sebastian Fernandez Giraldo.
> 
> On 7/24/2013 12:08 PM, Lauren McNees wrote:
>> I vote for option A, subscribing everyone automatically and letting them unsubscribe themselves if they really want to. Thanks for bringing this to our attention!
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 1:16 AM, Clinton Ebadi <clinton at unknownlamer.org> wrote:
>> 
>> 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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>> https://lists.hcoop.net/listinfo/hcoop-discuss
>> 
>> 
>> 
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> 
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