Open Stack

On 22/06/15 18:01, Tom Fifield wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I wanted to start a discussion around the default email settings for new
> accounts on ask.openstack.org
>
> There are five settings [default in braces] for the types of emails
> askbot sends regarding questions and answers:
>
> 1. Asked by me [instantly]
> 2. Answered by me [daily]
> 3. Individually selected [instantly]
> 4. Entire forum (tag filtered) [weekly]
> 5. Comments and posts mentioning me [instantly]
>
> 1,2,3 & 5 are obviously about things that have some direct relation to
> you or your activity on the site. It seems pretty reasonable to me that
> you want to find out about those pretty quickly in many cases.
>
> Number 4 is more unusual, since the software tries to guess what you
> might be interested in seeing based on a filter of tags:
>
> * show all tags
> * exclude ignored tags [default]
> * only interesting tags
> * only subscribed tags
>
> So, essentially all users who don't meticulously change their email
> settings will receive a weekly email with a random list of 7 questions,
> titled something like: "[Ask OpenStack] 7 updates about "virtio",
> "network", "neutron", "subnet", "requirements" and more".
>
>
> There are arguments for this behaviour - mainly it encourages return
> visits to the site and potentially results in solving questions that
> might otherwise not be seen.
>
> The are also arguments against this behaviour - for example our tags are
> normally very broad: eg nova, neutron, compute, juno meaning tags the
> software thinks are interesting for you may not be or that this
> behaviour is unexpected because you didn't explicitly subscribe.
>
>
>
> So, what do you think? Where is the sweet spot in these email settings?
>

Since sending this, I've received a couple further complaints from users 
about the weekly "Entire Forum" emails. Given the purpose of the emails 
is to encourage use, and we're annoying people right now, it seems like 
we're being counter-productive :)

Proposal: for new users: drop "Entire Forum (tag filtered)" down a level 
to only send email about "interesting tags", rather than "exclude 
ignored tags", and see how we go.



Regards,



Tom