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

[charmian]

I have to say, social solution #2 sounds like the best. There seems to be no point in doing something four times every month when it could be done approximately as effectively once a month. (Assuming these are routine updates) If there isn't enough content for once a week, there seems to be no point to it.

For people who really want to know what's happening right now, isn't changelog_digest or the code tours more useful for that anyhow?

[foxfirefey]

I kind of think the weekly dw_lounge posts could be kind of like the weekly pride posts in synecdochic--that is, a post encouraging people to talk about what they're working on or thinking about for Dreamwidth.

I think sometimes changelog_digest and code tours are too granular for people and don't present a good big picture--but then, it's easy to present the bigger picture monthwise as opposed to weekly anyway.

[charmian]

Yeah, and I think a lot of people who read the news posts aren't reading it as part of their participation in the project itself, but because they're users looking for important site news. So it's kind of a different purpose.

[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.

[birguslatro]

I ticked 'should be implemented as is', meaning option 2. Though I've just thought of a third option - tags on the news posts for monthly roundups and for any important posts that DW users should really hear about. With the ability to now filter by tags, that'd allow users to selectively get what they want.

A comment I heard was along the lines of "Why'd I ever get a paid DW account - it's like a Spanish Building site!", so you're right that there may be some adverse reactions to the construction noises...

[distractionary]

I like option #2.

[queenbarwench]

+1

[eruthros]

Me too!

[ninetydegrees]

+1 for solution #2.
I love the weekly updated, even when it's a "slow" week and there isn't much too say or nothing big to announce.

[zarhooie]

Changelog is also bad for people who don't speak code-ese at all.

[zarhooie]

I'm all about using dw_lounge more. I do think that spreading the weekly update burden to more than just M&D would be good, leaving them more free to do important stuff, like make stuff work. :)

[inarticulate]

I, for one, really love the fact that regular users do get this kind of dialogue and input and "here's what we're doing, here's why we're doing it, do you have any suggestions, here's how you can help," and I would miss that. It feels like there's an active effort to include users, which leads to a much better atmosphere (to me) and more desire to participate rather than the "people who help over here, regular users over here." That said, I wouldn't object to either of those options if it meant less work for Denise and Mark (which is why I didn't vote); I just want to make my reservations clear so that someone more skilled than I can hopefully work towards preserving that attitude.

[lassarina]

+1 to Option #2.

[kyrielle]

I like solution #2.

[the_shoshanna]

My "implement as is" vote means option #2. I love all the news and the updates and the code tours (YAY code tours!), though changelog is too much for me -- so I vote for #2 because it seems the option that requires the least work from the people posting the updates (three here and one there each month, instead of four there each month, but the same number of updates) while still getting me as much news as before: I just have to read it in two places. Which I'll barely notice, since they'll both show up on my reading page. Win-win!

(I'm subscribed to dw_lounge, but I don't actually see posts there; I gather they're all locked. But I'm assuming that would change if this proposal went through!)

[katieastrophe]

Another vote for solution 2.

[susanreads]

My vote is for option #2, as long as we still get code tours linked from the Herald.

[instantramen]

+1 to social 2 *is stuck in a commenting rut*

[existence]

This, yeah.

[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.

[alchemise]

+1

[foxfirefey]

I don't want that to stop, because I enjoy that too--that's why suggestion 2 is my favorite. That way, the weekly posts would move to dw_lounge and any user who wanted that more personal feeling could participate there (but users who weren't into that could still get regular but not offputtingly frequenct site updates). And all the dw_news posts could have some kind of a sign off mentioning the activities in dw_lounge, so that newer users could still get into that vibe.

And I don't think monthly has to be a hard rule, just the general rule of thumb--if we finish up some really nifty big feature in the middle of the month, I think it'd make sense to announce it then.

[inarticulate]

Mmm, I can see that, but some of the suggestions for dw_lounge do make it seem like while users can watch, users can't participate. For example, the comments being used for people to talk about what they accomplished-- if I'm average jo user, I didn't accomplish anything on DW, which means I wouldn't feel comfortable participating unless someone went out of their way to invite me into dialogue on x feature. I'm not saying it would necessarily be that way; I'm just saying that I want people to be aware of my reservations on this so that it won't be that way. I want DW to remain engaged with the community in a way that LJ isn't.

[foxfirefey]

Oh, yeah, currently dw_lounge isn't used for that purpose, but I totally think it could be repurposed for that.

[inarticulate]

[nodnod] Yeah, that's what I'm hoping. I just don't want people to go "well, DW doesn't want us/our input," and stop engaging at all-- most of the people I know only engage with DW through the news community.

[turlough]

IAWTC!

[cheyinka]

Social solution #2 sounds good to me. (Picked "with changes" because I only want that option.)

[ratcreature]

Unlike many others I dislike #2, mostly because I dislike news comms multiplying. I hate that on LJ that things are spread out so much that you need compilation newsletters to keep track of all the comms in which you might see some announcement that impacts you. It's one thing if there are relatively clear topic boundaries, and specialized comms that are really special interest, like it's fairly obvious what a changelog is and whether or not you are interested in that level of technical detail, but I have no idea whether I would need to subscribe to the lounge thing or not, or whether I'm a "more involved" user.

[foxfirefey]

I think you are a more involved user, from what I've seen. Nonetheless, it wouldn't be necessary for people to subscribe to dw_lounge to keep up--they'd only want to subscribe to it if they wanted the blow by blow. The posts in dw_news would summarize everything notable that happened in the dw_lounge posts.

[sky]

Yeah, as a pretty non-technical user, this is how I feel.

[cesy]

+1

[sofiaviolet]

Just popped into my head: maybe this is something we'd want to ask the people currently reading dw_news about? Put a section asking for feedback in the next weekly news post, or something.

[mark]

The reason I hadn't brought this up yet is because I expect that the volume of things to report has been low lately, but with me full time, that volume will increase.

[denise]

(Replying to Mark so he gets the notification, but this is more a top-level comment. *g*)

Yeah. I really dislike social solutions 1 & 2, honestly:

* When I was working for LJ, and we did every-other-week news posts, people bitched hard -- "you never tell us anything until forever later!"

* Even on 'slow' weeks, there's still stuff to say. I know that the process of writing updates is exhausting and draining, but I really like that it forces me to step back and reflect about what we're doing and how we're progressing.

* Every code release we do, there's a ton of tiny changes in aggregate. We're messing around with a lot of things (to improve them, obviously, but still), and people find all that change very, very distressing. The #1 thing you have to do when you're making as many iterative changes as we are is to communicate exactly what's going to be changing frequently, so people know "hey, this and that are going to change next time we push code". Half of the top-level sections I put into weekly updates are actually variants on this: "we're moving rapidly along on this, it's going to change soon, here's how it'll work, you guys need to know about that". The fact that we do repeat those messages so often is part of (IMO) the reason people have been so accepting of all the development.

* A lot of people tell me that they like the weekly updates, and more than that, the fact that we do weekly updates -- the fact we're so clear and communicative about the inner workings of DW -- and it does fit very well into our transparency goals. I'd really hate to scale that back.

I think perhaps the solution to the problem this suggestion is trying to address might be as simple as adding a reminder to any email notification fired by the "DW makes a new announcement" subscription that it's possible to unsub from the notification while still staying subbed to dw_news.

[turlough]

You have convinced me :-) *changes vote*

adding a reminder to any email notification fired by the "DW makes a new announcement" subscription that it's possible to unsub from the notification while still staying subbed to dw_news.

That's a good idea!

[sophie]

The DW Herald is actually run by people who are deliberately not involved with DW in a volunteering sense, and I don't think they have any plans to change anything. :)

[edit: Oops, they're *not* involved. Sorry, missed a word.]

[susanreads]

Aha! I hadn't thought of that. I don't need email notifications now that the Herald tells us when there's a new issue on my News filter. *goes to change vote*

[foxfirefey]

I did let them know that--they still wanted to be notified, just not every week. So, what I've done about this is make a community called the_dw_monthly which is going to be like the opposite of the_dw_herald, where I'll just post summaries of what's happened in the past month.

[susanreads]

I went to change my notifications and found that it doesn't say dw_news, it says "Dreamwidth Studios makes a new announcement". Is that like tracking dw_news, or does it include other things as well?

[cesy]

Yeah, changing my vote based on this and denise's comment above.

And denise's suggestion about adding a reminder about how to unsub would be good.

[denise]

It theoretically can include other things -- IIRC, we have both dw-news and dw-maintenance configured to send out those notifications (the "notify me when Dreamwidth makes a new announcement"), but it could be any community we want (it's a config option).

[zvi]

How would you guys feel about creating some tags for the newsletter, though, so people could subscribe to tags about things they care about and ignore stuff they don't. At the moment, you don't have a tagging system (the weekly news posts are not even tagged consistently as weekly news posts!)

[denise]

What kind of tagging do you think might be useful? (I am not at all opposed, but my brain doesn't quite classify things in the same way many people do, alas...)

[zvi]

Ack. I dunno if importing the structure from dw-suggestions makes sense or not? If not, something roughly by feature?

• styles
• code clean up
• business announcements
• reading filters
• access filters

Huh, I can see that list getting unwieldy even at the start of it. Er, maybe examine the practice of the-dw-herald?