Importance of "push" communication

[Chris Feahr]

Greetings... I have a comment on the overall communication model used by this (otherwise excellent and very nice-looking) forum.

I'm here today because (1) I had a few minutes free and (2) there happened to be a message in my email (the ONLY place I look regularly to see if the world has anything interesting to say to ME) from Paul, outlining a few potentially interesting topics on this forum. In other words, information from this forum was quite literally "pushed" into my view... got me a little bit interested... and caused me to take one simple action (a mouse click) to read more.

"Pull" communication, on the other hand, requires that I already have some compelling reason to go out and look for it... e.g., I need a new monitor and so I hunt down buy.com, do a little research and buy the product... or I wonder where the parts are that I ordered last week and so I hunt down the web-purchase order and check the status. I do NOT EVER just wander over to web sites that I know about, on the off-chance that there will be something interesting or useful there. I believe this is called "surfing the net" and I think the last time I did that was 1994!

Busy people are willing to "go fishing" for information in ONE PLACE each day and that one place is going to be their email in-box. Hence, the continued popularity of the ancient "listserve" discussion format. For many (including me) the email in-box is "live" all day and alerts us each time a new message arrives. If you put something there, I will see it. (If it gets annoying or excessive, I'll filter it to the trash-bin!)

In my opinion, the ideal forum model has a rich web interface (like this one) for reviewing complete "threads" and key-word searching of archived messages. But I'd like new messages in the conferences I'm following to be sent DIRECTLY to my email in-box. If I want to reply or start a new thread, I'd like to be able to do that without leaving my email program.

(just $.02 from someone who spends a lot of time in a LOT of tech. forums populated with people trying to do too many things at once!)

Best regards,
Chris

 

[AdminWolf]

Chris --

I Agree about the email . For many folks, email is absolutely the preferred method of communication.

One problem i've noticed with many of our users here is that they don't use multiple "folders" to store their email, so their inbox gets collosal. (More of a user education issue than anything else, i guess.)

This software takes an intermediate approach to pushing information out --

You can have it automatically send you email about the threads that you are interested in.

I think this might be particularly useful here, where it seems like a certain (large) subset of users comes in to ask a very specific question that they need answered, then disappears for a while.

For those folks, email notification is a superior method of communication, b/c they might get notification of a follow-up that occurred months later.

thanks for the kind words!
adam

 

[Chris Feahr]

I'm trying the "default" reply button here (leaving the subject line blank)... your comments make sense, Wolf. Thanks. If I understand you correctly, I can flag any individual conversation thread for email notification of a new "reply" message to that thread? What about flagging a whole forum or conference area for email notification of new activity?

Regarding the misuse of email folders, email filtering, etc... I think it's not so much lack of education, as lack of email volume and of general non-reliance on digital communication. It does take an extraordinary amount of "pounding" on people to get them to think of even having a persistent communication link with "the world", let alone getting them in the habit of checking it regularly.

Once people get over the hump and actually start participating, they experience all the benefits AND a whole new set of organizational headaches... dealing with a relative flood of email. That's when they need to spend an hour with their email "help" screens and learn how to create new folders and mailboxes, organize the address book, filter out junk, redirect mail from certain people into special folders, etc.

So I guess what I'm suggesting is that designing a system that is "careful" not to overwhelm people with email volume may actually tend to keep them in their "uninitiated" state... where the mind-set is to keep all this crap at bay and to stay out of the deep end of the digital pool... and out of the conversation. They'll never nearn to swim if they're always a little afraid of the water!

Regards,
Chris