TOPIC:

How come all members can e-mail out the agenda to everyone (using the e-mail icon on the agenda page)? They can even change where the replies go to. Don't you think this feature should be restricted to officers & the Toastmaster or something?

No. Members can only email the agenda to other members. (At least at this time.)

In some clubs, it is sometimes the practice that a member emails the agenda out when they take a role to notify the club of the update. You could argue that they should just set up role change notifications, but it does not always go that way.

However, I will admit the rationale for this pre-dates the addition of role change notifications. In other words, the original intent of the email agenda by any member was to serve a notification function. With newer notification approaches, it may be appropriate to revisit. However, I would probably want to add "role assignment notifications" first to address the case of being assigned by someone else to a role. (e.g. via the edit agenda dialog)

The other thing is that any change to this would probably be via an option that allows clubs to choose, rather than us making a blanket, "prescriptive" change. I am very cautious about being overly prescriptive about enforcing clubs to work a certain way as enforced by FTH, other than specific instances where we have historical considerations/experience that inform our decisions. We *do* want clubs to act in a way that "encourages" their success and we include that knowledge in design decisions, but we have to be careful not to define that success solely based on *our experience*. It is a bit of a balancing act for us and it is unlikely that users will always agree with our decisions because most users are looking at the provided FTH functionality through the lens of what works *through their club only*.

My suggestion is that you post an improvement suggestion that allows clubs to limit access to the Email Agenda feature. (e.g. via a setting in the Agenda Global Settings)

SteveTheTechie wrote:

The other thing is that any change to this would probably be via an option that allows clubs to choose, rather than us making a blanket, "prescriptive" change.

Sounds good to me. I'm just wary of members using this too often and all of the mail just becomes noise that no one pays attention to anymore.

user wrote:

SteveTheTechie wrote:

The other thing is that any change to this would probably be via an option that allows clubs to choose, rather than us making a blanket, "prescriptive" change.

Sounds good to me. I'm just wary of members using this too often and all of the mail just becomes noise that no one pays attention to anymore.

Understood. We are sensitive to that, as well. We are constantly looking at how to provide the most benefit via email without it being subject to abuse or being viewed as spam. When I started working on this system in 2013, we were using email "blasts" (mass emails) to notify clubs of system updates... we do not do that much anymore because of these considerations. That is also why I developed/implemented the "login messages" functionality as an alternative messaging approach.

My current strategy is to strive to provide ways for clubs and members to control what emails they actually want.