A rough idea I'd like to throw into the mix.
Replace separate digests for those on multiple groups with a single
customized site-wide HTML default formatted topic digest covering ALL
the forums they are a member.
This can be a reliable place to track what is new and would allow site
hosts to also include various organizational messaging of the
day/week/etc. to communicate strategically with participants.
I can see a time emerging where the digest mode becomes the default
delivery option for groups with e-mail requestable for all posts and
by topics of greatest interest.
Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org
Follow me - http://twitter.com/democracy
Thanks for your ideas, Steve.
Group members typically receive and read every message, as most groups are
small and the members are very interested in what is going on. Because of this
I doubt that digests will be the normal way of receiving notification about
activity in a group for most people in most groups.
However, in large active groups, such as the ones on the e-Democracy.org
Forums, the picture is quite different. Many members are interested in what is
going on, but not so interested that they want to read every message. For
example, in the Minnesota Issues Forum
<http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/>
• 35% of members receive a digest, and
• 28% of members receive no notification.
(These numbers will be a little high, as we do not remove the delivery setting
when a person leaves the group, but they give the general idea.)
I would be keen to see an HTML format of the digests sent out along with a
text-version. At the same time, I would love to see the information scent of
each entry in the digest increase. By increasing the information scent we
should help the members find topics that they want to read and comment on. For
example, the Web version of each topic lists the files that have been added to
the topic and the keywords in the topic. The digest messages do not list either
of these things.
Combining digests from multiple groups is an interesting idea, albeit a painful
one to implement. Currently GroupServer goes through all groups that require a
digest to be sent, constructs a digest, and sends the digest out to the members
that want to receive it. Constructing a unique message for every member —
comparing the digests that he or she wants to receive against the list of
available digests — would be a far slower operation.
For the record, close to 200 members of the e-Democracy forums receive more
than one digest, compared to the 940 members that receive only one digest.
Because of this, and the high complexity of sending unique digests, I would
favour tackling the HTML-formatted digests first.
