Newsletters, Blogs, and Voting

This is an experimental facility to manage communication with a group’s members, providing facilities to distribute newsletters electronically, run blogs and discussions, and to include electronic and formal votes on issues and committee elections.

Section 1 describes how a group member would use the facility, assuming that it has already been set up on the group’s web site. Section 2 describes how the group administrator manages the facility, setting up new discussion groups, and editing the characteristics of existing groups.

Section 1. Accessing the Blog On Line

On opening a page using this facility (see TestBlog for an example) a user sees something like this: -

Blogs (mailing lists) can be set up by the group administrator to be available to anybody (even unregistered visitors), to members, or to particular groups such as the group’s committee, so that this list will differ for different people. Whether users can look at messages, reply to them, or vote (when relevant) is controlled by the Group Administrator, so that you may not see a button to reply, to vote, or may even be refused permission to open a message.

Permissions are applied automatically and “instantly”. Thus if a blog has been set up for current members only, a user whose membership expires today will be able to use the blog today, and will be locked out tomorrow unless his membership is renewed. If his/her membership is renewed the day after, he (or she) immediately regains access to the blog.

Clicking the entry opens the relevant blog: -

New Topics

On clicking [New Post] a basic Word-like editor opens, and the post can be written: -

Enter a title for the post, and write the post within the editor window. You can: -

· Write the post with formatting: paragraph styles, fonts, font size, and colour.

· Copy/Paste from other windows (you may choose to prepare the newsletter with Word, and then paste it into this editor window to send it.

· You can Upload and “attach” documents by clicking the [Attach] button. These are not actually attached to the email that is sent, but are uploaded to the web site and a link is included into the posting.

· For long documents, like Newsletters, you may choose to send the entire newsletter, or you may choose to write a summary and “attach” the full newsletter as above. Also, the group administrator may have defined this blog to send only a notification, in which case recipients will receive a brief email that simply gives the title and “Click here to see the posting”.

When you have finished preparing the post, click [Test Post]. It is sent back to you, and another button, [Post] appears. This gives you an opportunity to check the email that will actually be sent out, seeing it as others will, before you send it to the entire list. You can send test posts as many times as you like. When you are ready, click [Post] and the message will be sent. This is sent in both plain text and HTML (formatted) form, and recipients will see one or other version depending on their email program settings.

Discussions

To see an existing topic, click “View”. The topic is displayed like this: -

· “Topic” shows the title of this posting.

· Under this, there may be further posting where others have replied to the post. In the above case there is only the original posting, but here’s another example where there have been many replies, including replies to replies: -

· Next you see the original message. In this case the message has been written as just a summary of the newsletter, with a link to the newsletter itself. You can click this link to open the document attached to this message. You cannot edit the message. By clicking on one of the replies, you can see the reply message.

· Finally, [Reply] gives you the option of replying, either to the original message, or to the reply that you clicked. This opens the editor window, which behaves as described above for a new post.

Voting

(Not yet developed)

Messages may give a voting option: if so, a [Vote] button will appear. There are basically two kinds of voting: -

· Informal: used when the vote is non-binding, intended to provide guidance only. For example, within NZGDB informal voting is used to give developers an indication of which options are preferred, but a final decision will be made by the development team taking into account factors such as difficulty, and impact on other features, that are not easy for outsiders to appreciate

· Formal: used for binding or important votes, such as committee elections.

Clicking the [Vote] button gives users the opportunity of selecting from a list of options. For informal votes in particular, the running total of votes cast for each option may be shown.

Replying and Voting by Email.

(Not yet developed).

Currently messages can only be posted on line. However it is intended that emails are sent from (for example): CommitteeDiscussions@KYHA.org.nz and will identify the messageid in their subject line. This will enable a recipient to simply reply to the email for this to be treated as a reply posting, subject of course to this user having permission to post a reply.

Hopefully voting can also be handled in this way, although there are some more difficult security issues here.

Section 2. Setting up and Managing a Blog

One or more of a group’s members is given a role “Group Adminstrator”. This gives them special powers to manage the group, and the group’s blogs.

Firstly, they will see a complete list of blogs, and also have a button to create a new blog: -

Creating a New Blog

Clicking the button [New Blog] displays a page where the blog’s characteristics are set. In this example we are setting up the blog “Committee Discussions”. Note that here, as in most cases, the permissions are set for “Show in Blog List” leaving the system to set all the other permissions to the same values. It is possible to set different permissions, for example you might allow even casual visitors to read your newsletters but only members can join discussions about them.

· First, the blog’s title is entered. This should be unique.

· Secondly there is a column of drop-down lists where each permission is given. If the permission is left unspecified, indicated by “???”, then it will be filled in from the previous permission if this is valid. However “visitors” may not post either a new topic or reply to an existing one, nor can they be sent emails. In the example above, by setting “Show in Blog List” and “Subgroup” for the first permission but leaving all the others unspecified, all permissions will be set to “Must be in Sub Group/Committee”.

Available options are: -

o Visitors. These are people viewing this page who have not logged on, even with a free registration.

o Anybody Registered. Anybody who has registered with the group, whether they are a current member or not.

o Current Members. This is anybody recorded by the membership system as a member from a date earlier than or equal to today, until a date later than or equal to today. It is up to the individual group to manage membership, and whether this requires a subscription or not.

o Must be in Sub Group (next field). A group may define various sub groups – Committee, Officers, Life Members, Project Team, etc – and the Group Administrator can put members (or even non-members who are registered) into one or more of these groups. If this option is taken, then a value must be set in the following “SubGroup” field.

o Administrators Only. When applied to “Show in Blog List”, this hides the blog from all users (except group administrators).

· The various permissions are: -

o “Show in blog list”. If the user qualifies, then the blog will appear in the list of blogs, and the user will be able to click the blog title and open the list of message titles. If the user does not qualify then they have no access to the blog.

o “Start New Topic”. If the user qualifies, then the [New Post] button will appear, and they can start a new topic. They cannot be a visitor.

o “May Open Message”. If the user qualifies, then they can click on the “View” command to open a message. Normally this would be the same as “Show in blog list”, but a separate option is provided in case a group has a list of articles that are only available to members, but wants to show others the list of articles because this may provide a reason for joining.

o “Email Message to”. Cannot be a visitor. If the user qualifies, then they will be sent an email message as determined by “Email Option”. “Email Option” is one of: -

§ No Email. No emails are sent. Use this option if the blog is purely an on-line discussion forum, and users are expected to check from time to time to see if there are new messages.

§ Email to List. This is the most likely option: the message is emailed to the list defined by “Email Message to”.

§ Email Notification to List. Members of the list defined by “Email Message to” are sent an email “A new message has been posted to <blog title>. Click here to read it”. This option should be used if you are particularly concerned to control the security of messages. Consider the example “Newsletter #1” above. If emailed to the list, then anybody receiving this email may forward it to somebody else who is not a member of the authorized group. This person may then click on the link and open the Newsletter. No great problem for a newsletter, indeed this is arguably an advantage as it spreads the group’s advertising, but for especially confidential discussions you may prefer to email only a notification as then only list members can reach the page showing the link to the attached document.

§ Email to Enrollees. Members of the ‘Email Message to” list must “enroll” to receive emails. This allows a blog to be set up that is optional for a particular group. For example, NZSG’s Memlist would be set up as Email Message to: Members with Email Option: Email to Enrollees.

§ Email Notification to Enrollees. Combines the previous two options: notification emails are sent to those enrolled in the list.

o Discussion (replies). Cannot be a visitor. If the user qualifies, then they will see the [Reply] button and be able to post a reply to either the original message or to a previous reply to this message. There replies will be posted to the email list, as modified by the Reply Email: -

§ Email list. The reply email will be sent to the list as defined by Email Message To and Email Option. Thus if this has been set up as group members/Email to Enrollees, then the reply email will be sent to everybody enrolled on this blog.

§ Topic Posters Only. The reply will be emailed only to the original topic poster, anybody else who has posted a reply to this topic, and anybody who has enrolled for this topic. The intention of this option is to allow the whole group to see new topics that have been posted, but not be involved further in discussions of topics that don’t interest them.

o Who may vote. (not yet implemented) Cannot be a visitor. If the user qualifies, and the message includes a voting option, then they will see a [Vote] button that will function as described above. This option is qualified by “Vote Options”

§ None. This blog does not support voting.

§ Informal Voting. Votes are informal, and are intended for guidance only. Voting may be secret or public, votes may be fixed or able to be changed by the voter (but nobody else), and running totals might be visible to all from the start of voting until voting closes. There need not be predefined start and finish dates for the voting.

§ Formal Voting. A formal vote is set up in the same way as an informal vote, but once set up the blog options are locked and cannot be changed by the group administrator. The vote will have defined start and stop dates, and a list of qualifying users (presumably members) at a particular date without email addresses are produced so that paper voting papers can be sent out to them. A number of procedures are available so that a returning officer can manage paper votes in combination with electronic votes. Voting is secret, and vote counts are not available to anybody until the voting closes.

Changing Blog Characteristics

When the Group Administrator selects a blog, they see two buttons that are not available to normal users: -

[Edit Blog] This allows the blog’s characteristics to be changed: as described above for Creating a New Blog, but starting with the characteristics already established for this blog.

It is not possible to edit the characteristics of a Formal Voting blog, and so this button won’t appear in these cases.

[Archive Blog] or [Delete Blog]

If the blog is empty, then this button will say “Delete Blog”. Clicking it will cause the blog to be deleted.

However, if the blog contains any messages, then it cannot be deleted, and the button will say “Archive Blog”. Clicking this and it becomes available only to Group Administrators, effectively deleting it for all other users.