Hmm, I take your point Karen.
When I advocated opt-in, I was thinking in terms of a conventional listserv
like LIS-CILIP, and trying to find a way of building up its subscriber base
beyond the pitiful less than 4% of the membership we have today. Unless we
can find a way to do this it will never be a particularly reliable guide to
the opinions of the membership on the whole.
In the case of a web based community of practice, I agree all members would
in a sense already be opted-in for online access.
I think I would still go for an "opt out" approach for email alerts, despite
the drawbacks you have indicated. My ideal is to give every member the
chance to be informed and participate in debate, and that involves push
technology. And in my preferred approach, the first "push" would be an
unsolicited lowest-common-denominator email, welcoming the member to the
community of practice. It would tell the member that their profile had been
set for them to receive email alerts, but that they could go online to
change this to RSS alerts or no alerts at all.
Some members would then take the trouble to go online to opt out. And I
agree, a large number of the members' email addresses would initially be
incorrect. But, assuming your figure of 35% bounce, we would end up with a
subscriber base of some 14,300, compared with the current 1,030.
Best
Bruce
******************************************
Prof Bruce Royan www.concurrentcomputing.co.uk
41 Greenhill Gardens, Edinburgh, EH10 4BL, UK
+44 131 4473151 +44 77 1374 4731
******************************************
-----Original Message-----
From: Chartered Library and Information Professionals
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Karen Blakeman
Sent: 10 July 2006 16:22
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Closure of this List
Bruce Royan wrote:
> I was satisfied by the assurances received on all the above points (except
> the Opt out one, which may possibly not be allowed under Data Protection
> legislation
I assumed at Council that the automatic opt-in meant that members would
not have to alter their Profile to access the communities of practice. I
would log in to the members' area on the CILIP web site and there would
be an option for me to go the CoPs.
Is this Opt-in/Opt-out thing referring to email alerts? If so, I would
strongly advise against it.
I vaguely recall that, technically, this might be allowed as CILIP has
an ongoing business/working relationship with members? I am sure Charles
or someone else will be along in a moment and be able to quote chapter
and verse on this.
Legalities aside, I would be extremely p****d off if my membership body
started sending me unsolicited email alerts for a service that I was not
interested in. Actually, I would be extremely p****d off even if I was
interested in the alerts as I would rather have RSS alerts! If my email
address was a work one, my employer might have an AUP in place that
forbids the use and receipt of email alerts. And if these things started
pouring in without my consent or without me telling the IT bods to
whitelist them CILIP could be blacklisted (actually, it periodically is!)
If we are indeed talking about email alerts I hope that CILIP's ISP has
the capacity to deal with the bouncers. UKeiG's experience of the email
addresses in the CILIP membership database is that around 35% bounce.
These are not the generic "failed" bounces but "user unknown", "host not
found", "this person has left the company" etc.
It really does have to be opt-in
--
Karen Blakeman, CILIP UKeiG Councillor
88 Star Road, Caversham, Berks RG4 5BE, UK
t: +44 118 947 2256 m: +44 7764 936733 f: +44 20 8020 0253
Mailto:[log in to unmask], Web - http://www.rba.co.uk/
|