Linda's Soapbox
Editorial by Linda Johnson

HOW *NOT* TO DO PEOPLE A FAVOR

Well, I REALLY did it this time!  And all I was trying to do was be helpful and considerate!  :-(

For those of you who aren't aware of Yahoo's recent change in their privacy policies, let's just say they have made some changes to their *free* services that I don't really agree with.  (If you would like to learn more about this, read this.)

Since I own a Yahoo group for Microsoft Office users, I decided maybe it was time for a change.  So, I opened up a new discussion thread in the group asking if people would like the group moved away from Yahoo and many people agreed that they were indeed interested and some suggested I check out a place called freelists.org that hosts email discussion groups that are technically oriented.  One of the people who was especially supportive of me moving the group to freelists is  Mike Baynes (who, by the way, will be joining the Fleet and taking over the Safety Belt column in this newsletter next month and I know you will all love him!).  Anyway, Mike moved his groups to freelists and had nothing but good stuff to say about them.  So, I figured I'd investigate.

Well, freelists is not like Yahoo.  There is definitely a greater learning curve for new list owners who are used to Yahoo's point and click interface.  Freelists allows group owners to have WAY more control over their groups, but it's all done through switches and configurations I didn't understand.  After looking into freelists, I decided this was indeed the place I wanted to move my group, since freelists uses NO ADS, gives me the ability to block ALL SPAM, and let's ME control what my group does and doesn't have to see (like autoresponders run amuck and people trying to unsubscribe by sending their message to the whole group....sometimes repeatedly...geesh). 

But, here's where I made my first mistake. I sent an email to the Yahoo group and told them I was going to test it out.  Unfortunately, many members of the group were set to "no mail" or "digest mail" and hadn't yet read this message from me.  So, they were not aware I was doing this. Actually, many of them had joined the Yahoo group a long time ago, then set themselves to "no mail" and forgot they were even members. 

My second mistake:  I thought I would move all the members over to freelists and, in the process, be able to easily convert the "no mail" and "digest" members over to the same settings in freelists.  NOT!!  What happened was all members were moved over in the "individual emails" mode. 

Well, now this wouldn't have been so bad, except for my third mistake:  Once I had seen that all members were going to be getting individual mails, I sent out ONE test mail and asked that no one reply, that this was just a test to let them all know they had been moved over and now I would manually have to change all their settings.  However, my request for no one to reply did not work.  Members, trying to be helpful, replied to this email letting me know they got it and everything seemed to be working fine.  However, these emails went to all the members who had chosen NOT to receive individual emails at Yahoo and they were NOT HAPPY!  Of course, now along with all the people writing to say "Yep. I got the test message and it worked well", the list was being flooded with messages that said stuff like "Who are all you people and why am I getting all this mail?" to "Either stop sending me mail or I will report you!" to "Who the @#$%!& are you??" to <text removed because it's so obscene, you wouldn't want to read it>.  And the mail was going to all members in droves, while I was scrambling to try to understand how freelists worked so I could stop the madness.

Suffice it to say, I received more hate mail during that week than I ever have in my life.  It amazes me how cruel people can be, even though I was begging them to give me a chance to sort it out, and apologizing all over the place for my mistakes.  I can tell you, I did NOT feel real good about logging onto the Internet that week!

However, now that the madness has ended and my Office group is back on track and once again supplying all the people with great advice on how to use the Office programs, I want to publicly thank all of my members who stuck by me through this and helped me learn from these mistakes.  The group lost about 200 members during this transition, but, in my opinion, the ones that were lost didn't really want to belong in the first place, so the group of almost 500 members that is now in place are all there with full knowledge of WHY they are there and the group is running better than ever.  So, I guess you could call this Spring Cleaning, but, boy oh boy, it was indeed a painful experience.

So....did I learn anything?  I sure hope so. 

Since you now have received your latest copy of ABC from freelists, we shall see.  Since I did it differently when I moved ABC over, I figured I would share with you the steps of moving a list from one location to another, THE RIGHT WAY.

Step 1:  Send an email to all members of the original group, from the original group home, but send it as a Special Announcement, which all members will receive, no matter what their settings.  In this letter, give them explicit instructions on how to unsubscribe from the old group, so they will not be automatically moved over to the new group.  Give them a date when the group will be moved so they can act on this information before you take any steps.

Step 2:  Create a test group for the new group that consists of yourself and a few voluntary guinea pigs, so you can test that the mail is working, etc., without involving all members.

Step 3:  Once you are sure the new group is functioning properly, import all your members, then send a welcome message which tells them they are all on individual mail status and gives them clear instructions for changing this, along with instructions for how to unsubscribe.  Again, send this out before you send any other messages to the new list.

Seems pretty simple, when I look at it now.  But, boy oh boy, hindsight is a killer, eh?

Again.  Thanks to all in my Office group who stuck with me and supported me throughout "hell week".  And thanks to all of you ABC subscribers for sticking with me too.  Since I sent the original message to you from Yahoo and the welcome message to you from freelists, ABC has only received 9 unsubscribe requests at freelists.  However, the freelists group has received many new subscribers and I noticed many of the Yahoo members unsubscribed from the Yahoo version after they received the freelists welcome message, so that shows me that people support the move to freelists.  I don't think you will be disappointed.

And, the biggest plus of all is I received many replies to the freelists welcome message telling me that FINALLY they seem to be receiving mail referring to ABC and that they never got anything, NOT ONE ISSUE, when the ezine was hosted by Yahoo groups.  So, FINALLY, I think I can feel secure that all subscribers will actually receive their issues and I won't have to spend countless hours and bandwidth sending hundreds of issues from my own ISP.

So, here's the freelists homepage for ABC.  If you want to subscribe, unsubscribe, or set yourself on "vacation" (which is freelists version of "no mail"), just go here and use the dropdown menu at the top.

http://www.freelists.org/webpage/abcomputers

And if you are interested in joining my MS Office group at freelists, go here:

http://www.freelists.org/webpage/mso

And, of course, now that you are safe and secure at freelists, if you would like to unsubscribe from the Yahoo version of this newsletter, since I have moved all of ABC's archives over to freelists, just send a blank email to ABComputers-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com and you too can take one step to show Yahoo we will not tolerate this crap!

Thanks for your time and HAPPY COMPUTING!
Linda

Linda Johnson is a college instructor of all of the Microsoft Office Programs, as well as Adobe PhotoShop and Windows. She also teaches online distance learning classes in Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Word at Eclectic Academy. She has worked helpdesk and teaches and lectures at many local businesses and tech schools in her area. Support this newsletter by checking out Linda's eBooks, MS Word MAGIC!, Book I: Fonts, Fun & Formats and Book II: Table Wizardry, How To Get Started As a Software Trainer, and her newest series of MSOffice eBook Tutorials and CD