TOPIC:

Steve:
I saw your message when I logged on as an admin today at Omaha Toastmasters Club 281.

I have two suggestions.

1.) You already have a timer that shows how long it has been since a member's last login. What would you think of a warning email at five months and moving the member to a "not opted in" status at six months? The club admin could then resend the opt in if the member wishes to use the website again.

2.) As a club officer, I can now run an administrative report from Club Central. When I am inviting past members to a club anniversary, I don't need to use your interface. Why not remove the email to former members functionality. It may also be a good idea to invoke the "opt in" process when moving a former member to the active membership list. It may also be worth doing the "opt in" process anytime the member or the admin updates the email address.

Tom Colling
Omaha Toastmasters Club 281

You wrote:

[2019-02-23 21:20:16 GMT, FTH Developer] As I alluded to in a prior message, FTH has been experiencing some email deliverability issues. While you may think this is a "bug" or a problem with FTH, the reality is that it is the result of several things happening at the same time... a perfect storm.

I have been scrambling for a number of years to ensure that the email sending code in the system keeps pace with the ever evolving email systems and requirements. It is an ongoing challenge made more complicated by the fact that there is very little consistency in how different email systems (e.g. Gmail vs Outlook) handle emails and what their expectations are for a "good email" vs spam. We have had to add email security features to outgoing emails on your behalf to keep the major email systems from considering emails send though FTH as being spam. However, the email libraries we use for the server code (and email) are a bit limited in their support of email security features... I have had to use quite a few workarounds to get everything to in the system to "play nice" and work well in an integrated fashion.

Most of you probably do not want to have to deal with all this technical stuff... that is understandable. However, you all need to understand that this is important to *everyone* that uses the FreeToastHost system. If we cannot deliver email via FTH, we will have to stop supporting that and a very important aspect of the system would be essentially left to "die on the vine".

Additionally, there seem to be some clubs that insist on sending out blasts of emails to anyone who ever was in contact with the club, even if that was from years ago. That is essentially using the system to spam those people, and this sort of activity will be eliminated from the system one way or another... I will stop it and I will be very heavy-handed about it, if need be. My patience is gone and the system's email reputation has been negatively impacted,

Next, some clubs do not clear out bogus email addresses. If you keep sending emails to bogus email addresses, some email systems consider that to be the "mark of a spammer". Again, I will address this, and I will be very heavy-handed about it, if need be.

You may think that the email activities of your specific club does not affect anyone else who uses the FTH system. That is just patently wrong. We all use the same FTH server for email... One club that is not responsible for how they sent email through the system *will* eventually affect everyone else that uses the system.

Please spread the word within your respective districts that clubs using FTH need to be more responsible in how they send email via FTH. They need to delete any non-member email addresses that have been in the system for longer than 6 months and they need to delete any bogus/non-working email addresses from their member data immediately. If you regularly send out a lot of emails to club members, please consider implementing a "email rationing scheme" for your club to limit the number of emails sent each day to a maximum value. It may require combining multiple topics in one email, but your members will likely thank you, and you will be helping to keep the system viable for the future.

I wish I didn't feel the need to send these sorts of messages out, but we are at the point where the attention level needs to be raised. The steps we take moving forward could very well impact the long-term viability of FreeToastHost.

Regards,

Steve James, DTM
FreeToastHost System Developer
https;//support.toastmastersclubs.org

Tom,

Thanks for the suggestions. These are in line with the sorts of things I am considering. Appreciate the post.

Currently, I am not as concerned about emails to current club members. However, this very well could be an issue, also, if clubs fail to move past/inactive members to the former members list. For example, if people who are no longer members keep getting emails via the members list, they may be inclined to mark the emails as spam in their email system, since they will not likely have control over whether they are still on the members list in FTH. I could add a "I am no longer a member" links in emails to members, but there is no guarantee that would get used, and then we would have to deal with the issue of what happens if they click it by mistake.

- Steve

At our club we have amassed a lot of email addresses from former members and from former guests. I would like to remove the older ones from these lists, and I understand how important this is. However, I don't know how old these entries are. If nobody has cared to follow up these entries and document this in the web site (and nobody has ever caredito do this in our club), I nave no idea when these entries were made.
Is there a way to find out now?
I would find it useful to add a field to the data base: When quit as a member? and When been a guest? Then it would be easy to weed out these data in the future.

Andreas wrote:

At our club we have amassed a lot of email addresses from former members and from former guests. I would like to remove the older ones from these lists, and I understand how important this is. However, I don't know how old these entries are. If nobody has cared to follow up these entries and document this in the web site (and nobody has ever caredito do this in our club), I nave no idea when these entries were made.
Is there a way to find out now?
I would find it useful to add a field to the data base: When quit as a member? and When been a guest? Then it would be easy to weed out these data in the future.

Understood... Thanks for your input. We have the date information in the database already... it is just not readily visible to users at the moment.

I had the same idea and have the same request. I see that we can generate Excel exports from the Membership Management tool. Would it be possible to auto-include a column in those exports indicating when the entry was created?

Sue Worden DTM (Clubs 311, 4992, 6651, 8510, 3702856)

Steve, thanks for all you do, first and foremost. Ia green that perhaps there be a time limit on maintaining former club members data.

Anyone can retrieve past member info from the international website by visiting ADMINISTRATIVE REPORTS, and selecting from the drop down menu.

Good luck!

We sometimes have a member leave and then come back a year later. I would hate to lose their speech history, but I think it would be reasonable to set inactive members (six months without login) to the "not opted in status."

I also can't see can't see any need to send email to former members from the website since that contact information is now available to club officers from Club Central.

When the FTH email former members functionality was created it was the only way to contact former members.

Now that there is an alternative and that their is systemic risk to FTH, it would be reasonable to limit emails. Former member functionality may be an easy quick win.

Tom Colling
Omaha Toastmasters Club 281
281.toastmastersclubs.org

There is no need to remove former members or guests from the database, just remove their email address.

Andreas wrote:

There is no need to remove former members or guests from the database, just remove their email address.

Ok, what is the point of having guest data in the database for a long period of time? They are either going to join the club or they are not.

At Omaha Toastmasters Club 281 we have no one in the guest list. We have several in the prospect list and I just tried moving one to member. The did not result in an opt in request.

I see that FTH has a nice follow-up module that I haven't used before. I can't imagine still expending effort with a prospect after 3-6 months.

An auto delete would ease the burden of manually cleaning this up regularly.

"Auto-delete" should be an option. Maybe it can be the default, but a club should have the option to NOT have the system automatically delete entries, or at least to specify certain entries not subject to auto-deletion.

The reason I say this is because of the following types of situations, which exist in several clubs to which I belong. Situation 1: A member's spouse develops a serious medical condition. The member becomes inactive to provide full-time home care but specifically requests being left on the member email distribution list to keep up with what's going on in the club - and plans to return to active status when again possible. Situation 3: A long-time member has never logged in to the club website - and never will - but wants to receive the agenda emails serve as meeting reminders. The member reads those emails, identifies and prepares for the open roles (including speeches!), attends regularly and fills at least one remaining open role "on the spot" as needed. Situation 3: A member is rarely able to attend meetings, due to nearly-constant travel or other work-related conflicts, and only logs in to the club website on those rare occasions when meeting attendance is possible.

Sue Worden DTM (Clubs 311, 4992, 6651, 8510, 3702856)

aliciawhite911 wrote:

Anyone can retrieve past member info from the international website by visiting ADMINISTRATIVE REPORTS, and selecting from the drop down menu.

Actually, Alicia, for an old club like mine (chartered 1954) when I checked the ADMINISTRATIVE REPORTS on TI website (for the first time last month), I only saw names and email addresses for past members beginning recently (like last 15 years), when the TI website was first created. So for our 65th anniversary I will start there (and verify the email addresses are still current; then look through our monthly Membership Roster (in those when members were added) on my PC, plus past paper copies of Membership Rosters Iand Excels of invitees and attendees) I may still have from 40th-60th anniversaries looking for living and department former members.

I currently keep all paid members in the (Active) FTH Membership List so they get my messages each month (looking to fill agenda openings), even though many have not been attending. I was wondering if I should remove Non-attending members, but naive enough to think some might resume attending. Steve, is there a "rule of thumb" when Inactive Paid members should be removed, maybe to an Inactive custom group? I always remove unpaid members 30 days after the fail to Renew by Oct 1 or April 1. (I've often wondered is some of the Inactive members have blocked our FTH messages.)

Steve, does limiting messages apply equally from sending messages through FTH (as in forwarding Agendas) and using Members-xxxxxx for sending non-agenda group emails to members too?