[Ldsoss] Ward Website Email Broadcasting
Hi All- I apologize in advance if this is beating a dead horse for some of you. This list is just one avenue I'm hoping the message can reach someone of influence at HQ. Thanks for any fixes/enhancements you can make. Below is a forward from my last ward's ward webmaster and while not intended to be broadcast like this (I received his permission), illustrates very frankly the frustrations wards have with using the Email Broadcast functionality on the ward websites. It is my understanding based on past memos from SLC, that the Church does not approve of non-lds.org email groups for official ward/stake business. Yet it is my observation that many feel like there is no good alternative. It would be interesting to know... Out of all the wards that regularly use email as an effective form of communication, which percentage are actually using the ward websites and which percentage still maintain contraband yahoogroups/googlegroups or other mailing lists? Then there are the wards that abide by Church policy, decommission their seemingly effective, external ward email list, but because of restrictive functionality, never quite make the transition to using the ward website's Email Broadcasts, crippling what was once useful communication. The later is my current ward's situation. -Greg Forward below: * *Issues with LDS.org's email system (in no particular order):* In our experience drops 10% of emails (this was a huge headache, and unfortunately our GNU Mailman system had similar reliability issues later as well). Is frequently having technical difficulties (can't login during busy periods, etc). Also quite frustrating. Requires full admin access to send emails (this means these admins will also have full access to all of the ward administration functions as well). No moderator functions - so you must give a few users full admin access and then have other users send those admins the emails in order for them to then send the message to the ward. This may not seem like a huge bottle-neck to someone who has never had this responsibility, but it slows things down substantially, especially if the admin isn't as responsive as the users would like (sometimes it would take me a full day to get to requests and users would be very frustrated). Submitting an email through LDS.org requires the admin to: 1) go to lds.org 2) type in username and password 3) open the admin section 3) navigate to the email submission form 4) copy the subject of the email 5) paste the subject of the email 6) copy the body of the email 7) paste the body of the email 8) reformat the body of the email so it looks presentable 9) submit the message content [if something goes wrong here, then you lose all your work] 10) Choose an email list to send the message to 11) submit the message 12) check your email 13) email still hasn't arrived an hour later, so check email again 14) several hours later you check your email and it went out - hooray! Compare this with the admin receiving an email with a link that they click to approve the and it goes out immediately. It's the difference of several minutes-to-hours versus a few seconds. And when you're confronted with a several-minute (or more) task like that, then you say I don't have a few minutes to do that right now and put it off till the evening or the next day when you may have time to go through the whole process - and hope during that time that any other emails that need to be sent will be requested soon so you can do them all at once. Alternately, if the process only takes a few seconds, you do it right away - since Hey, this will take less than 10 seconds and will be done! Due to the effort required and unreliability involved in the lds.org system, some users would either not send the message at all or just circumvent the system (ask for the full official email list and then do an evite so they could control the system, even when an actual evite was unnecessary). This would cause problems because, there would then be an old 'official' ward email list being passed around and used that would obviously not include new members - and so announcements would go out inviting everyone from the old list, including people who had left, and leaving out the most important new members. Usually, since the admins send the message and not the actual sender - the responses end up getting received by the admin who then has to forward all of them to the actual sender (usually because users will just hit 'reply' to the message rather than read the instructions in the message to email someone else, then have to copy and paste that email address of the actual sender and send it that way). Does not allow attachments. Doesn't support emailing members outside the ward (involved non-members). Doesn't archive the messages. Allows only plain-text formatting. Only supports very restricted and buggy file-sharing on the site (I believe the file has to be either pdf, doc, or
Re: [Ldsoss] Ward Website Email Broadcasting
--- Greg Hart [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Then there are the wards that abide by Church policy, decommission their seemingly effective, external ward email list, but because of restrictive functionality, never quite make the transition to using the ward website's Email Broadcasts, crippling what was once useful communication. The later is my current ward's situation. That's my ward's situation, too. We used to have a Mailman list set up for a weekly newsletter for parents of the Young Men (and several of the YM themselves were also on the list). The list was set up so that any of the bishopric or the YM presidency could send mail to the list, but it was generally the secretary who was responsible for the newsletter. Now, we don't do any newsletter at all, because we were never able to duplicate the functionality using the web site. ___ Ldsoss mailing list Ldsoss@lists.ldsoss.org http://lists.ldsoss.org/mailman/listinfo/ldsoss
Re: [Ldsoss] Ward Website Email Broadcasting
I've forwarded all comments on this thread to the department in charge of this. Keep the input coming and I'll keep forwarding. Tom Greg Hart wrote: Hi All- I apologize in advance if this is beating a dead horse for some of you. This list is just one avenue I'm hoping the message can reach someone of influence at HQ. Thanks for any fixes/enhancements you can make. Below is a forward from my last ward's ward webmaster and while not intended to be broadcast like this (I received his permission), illustrates very frankly the frustrations wards have with using the Email Broadcast functionality on the ward websites. It is my understanding based on past memos from SLC, that the Church does not approve of non-lds.org email groups for official ward/stake business. Yet it is my observation that many feel like there is no good alternative. It would be interesting to know... Out of all the wards that regularly use email as an effective form of communication, which percentage are actually using the ward websites and which percentage still maintain contraband yahoogroups/googlegroups or other mailing lists? Then there are the wards that abide by Church policy, decommission their seemingly effective, external ward email list, but because of restrictive functionality, never quite make the transition to using the ward website's Email Broadcasts, crippling what was once useful communication. The later is my current ward's situation. -Greg Forward below: * *Issues with LDS.org's email system (in no particular order):* In our experience drops 10% of emails (this was a huge headache, and unfortunately our GNU Mailman system had similar reliability issues later as well). Is frequently having technical difficulties (can't login during busy periods, etc). Also quite frustrating. Requires full admin access to send emails (this means these admins will also have full access to all of the ward administration functions as well). No moderator functions - so you must give a few users full admin access and then have other users send those admins the emails in order for them to then send the message to the ward. This may not seem like a huge bottle-neck to someone who has never had this responsibility, but it slows things down substantially, especially if the admin isn't as responsive as the users would like (sometimes it would take me a full day to get to requests and users would be very frustrated). Submitting an email through LDS.org requires the admin to: 1) go to lds.org 2) type in username and password 3) open the admin section 3) navigate to the email submission form 4) copy the subject of the email 5) paste the subject of the email 6) copy the body of the email 7) paste the body of the email 8) reformat the body of the email so it looks presentable 9) submit the message content [if something goes wrong here, then you lose all your work] 10) Choose an email list to send the message to 11) submit the message 12) check your email 13) email still hasn't arrived an hour later, so check email again 14) several hours later you check your email and it went out - hooray! Compare this with the admin receiving an email with a link that they click to approve the and it goes out immediately. It's the difference of several minutes-to-hours versus a few seconds. And when you're confronted with a several-minute (or more) task like that, then you say I don't have a few minutes to do that right now and put it off till the evening or the next day when you may have time to go through the whole process - and hope during that time that any other emails that need to be sent will be requested soon so you can do them all at once. Alternately, if the process only takes a few seconds, you do it right away - since Hey, this will take less than 10 seconds and will be done! Due to the effort required and unreliability involved in the lds.org system, some users would either not send the message at all or just circumvent the system (ask for the full official email list and then do an evite so they could control the system, even when an actual evite was unnecessary). This would cause problems because, there would then be an old 'official' ward email list being passed around and used that would obviously not include new members - and so announcements would go out inviting everyone from the old list, including people who had left, and leaving out the most important new members. Usually, since the admins send the message and not the actual sender - the responses end up getting received by the admin who then has to forward all of them to the actual sender (usually because users will just hit 'reply' to the message rather than read the instructions in the message to email someone else, then have to copy and paste that email address of the actual sender and send it that way). Does not allow attachments. Doesn't support emailing members outside the ward (involved non-members). Doesn't archive the
