Create ways for people to stay on top of DW without receiving weekly update emails

[foxfirefey]

Title:
Create ways for people to stay on top of DW without receiving weekly update emails

Area:
Notifications

Summary:
Figure out a way to satisfy both highly involved and peripherally involved members for news update frequency.

Description:
This isn't so much something that I want to see happen so much as something that I've seen out in the wild, so to speak, and thus want considered and discussed. Basically, the person felt that they got too much email from DW and that they didn't think there was enough to be notified weekly for, but they still wanted to keep notified about the site. After thinking about it, I think that they're right for the casual user--weekly might be too much for somebody who wants to keep updated with the site in general, but isn't so invested that they need to know about everything the week it happens. This post is trying to explore ways to make that happen.

Right now's a new month, so that's a good transition period.

Social solution #1: Biweekly instead of weekly updates

The pros to this is that everyone watching is "on the same page", so to speak. Lately sometimes we've been scrambling sometimes to find enough for every week. It's good in a way, to force us to think outside the box about what might be useful for people to know about, but I think sometimes people can tell we're spreading it thin. And comments on news posts (not counting play comments, which are fine and fun and all, but don't really count for this purpose) have been a bit slower lately. Biweekly might be a better pace.

Social solution #2: Monthly updates in dw_news and use dw_lounge for weeklies

We could start doing monthly updates around the 1st of every month, and do weekly catch ups in dw_lounge and let more involved users subscribe to that. The post before the monthly update could be the "make sure you get stuff in for the update now post". And this way, it'll be much easier for mark and denise to compose posts for dw_news--there will be less scrambling for "something to put in the update", often at the last moment, and a bevvy of summary posts to look at and compose the news update from instead. Posts in dw_lounge could also start alternate between more staff people than mark and denise, giving them a break.

I think this is kind of my favorite, really. It gives the casual user the wide-scope view at a slower rate, while keeping the closely involved members satisfied (Monday rituals!).

Technical solution: Allow people to specify whether they want to get email updates monthly or when news posts

There could be two ways to sign up for news notifications: when the news community (such as dw_news) posts, or a roundup of links at the beginning of each month.

The pros to this is that it doesn't require us to change anything socially. Those more interested can follow along every week, other people can have links to the news updates every month. On the other hand, it makes it more annoying for the casual user to keep up them, because they then have to read four or five different posts, so it might be effort to code without actually making anything better for the people who need it most.

Poll #1400 Create ways for people to stay on top of DW without receiving weekly update emails

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 30

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
10 (33.3%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
5 (16.7%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
10 (33.3%)

(I have no opinion)
3 (10.0%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (6.7%)

Comments

[niqaeli]

I'm for social solution #2. Moving the weekly stuff over to dw_lounge sounds good, with a monthly news update that covers everything major.

I would definitely still like to see code tours done regularly, if not weekly -- it's particularly interesting to me to get the plaintext explanation of what all the patches are doing. And maybe linking to them in the Big Picture monthly post for people who are curious about the small picture but don't want to parse changelog from coder into plaintext.

[foxfirefey]

I think code tours should still be done weekly--mostly because I've done some of them and I think it'd be too overwhelming a task if left for longer periods, especially since they're only going to get longer now.

[turlough]

IAWTC!

[cesy]

+1