Re: [AGA-mcm] Forum future

[Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>]

On Wed, 9 Dec 2009, Bailin Shaw wrote:

> Erik, can you explain what you're doing in a non-tech savvy way?  I'm not 
> really following what
> you're intending to do.  Sorry about my ignorance in this topic.

Bailin, there's really two issues here.

1. I'm getting ready to do a big software and hardware upgrade of the 
computer that runs basically everything AGA online.  That includes the 
software that runs the forum, which is now 2 years out of date.  Part of 
the snafu is the e-mail notification/gateway customization I added to the 
original forum.  It sucks, and isn't available in the new forum.  So I 
will clean it up, and switch to something more bound to the forum.  It 
will be easier to use. Beyond that, it gets technical.


2. But lookie here, I am walking through the list of people who are using 
the *existing* system, and only two moderators are subscribed to 
the mailing list that sends out an e-mail every time someone posts on the 
public forums.

Most folks, it seems, are subscribed to a different e-mail list, not the 
one that shows you every post on the forum.  And some, at least, are under 
the impression that this subscription was notifying them of every post 
(which isn't true).

When we put the forum up, I did say "hey, everyone, if you want to get a 
copy of every post, subscribe to this nifty new e-mail list!  It's even a 
topic:

http://forum.aquatic-gardeners.org/viewtopic.php?t=98

For most folks, I would not give a hoot about this.  Except that the AGA 
forum needs all the AGA "brass" participation it can get.  All the 
questions get generally answered by... big surprise here... mostly the 
people who receive the e-mails with the posts in them.  Example: I have 
answered "When are the contest results going to be announced?"  no less 
than FOUR TIMES in the month of November.  Scott sent a lengthy screed in 
the last year or so about how tired he is of being the only one answering 
newbie questions.  A good response from the mods to this would be "hey, 
I'm not checking that forum every day, nobody ever uses it!"  Fair enough. 
But everyone at least should be using the geezer gateway to find out WHEN 
someone posts.

So my question was, how come no mods signed up for the geezer gateway?

And it sounds like the answers are

        * People think they already are, because they are signed up for
          the other mailing list.

        * Mods don't know this is a valuable tool for keeping up

        * People don't know about it at all

So the follow-up question is, How do we get all the mods to subscribe to 
the replacement when it's up?

Ben's answer is prudent and simple: keep bugging them until they set their 
preferences.

I suppose we could further enforce this by auto-subscribing each mod to 
the topics they are supposed to be moderating.  We shall see.

  - Erik

PS: Now it looks like the nice photo CAPTCHA is not compatible with the 
latest phpBB.

--
Erik Olson                                                        Sent from my 
crusty old Linux box
erik at thekrib dot com

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