[Chapter-delegates] Problems with new membership system

Tue Feb 12 12:20:40 PST 2019

Dear All

Biggest challenge for now ( while still getting the feel of the new system)

Looking for the notice/messaging forum  for the members for discussions and interaction.

Otherwise wholeheartedly agreeing with concern of previous colleagues.

Nashilongo

________________________________
From: Chapter-delegates <chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org> on behalf of Dewole Ajao <dewole at isoc.ng>
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2019 8:37 PM
To: Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond; Chapter Delegates; amshelp at isoc.org
Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Problems with new membership system

Hi Olivier and All,

On our own side, apart from the disappeared members (that we assume did not opt-in), I've observed the following from the AMS side:

You can no longer send email to (applicant) members with pending applications. This was a useful feature as we used to email them to say welcome and tell them a little more about the Chapter and how they could participate (even before accepting their applications). Sadly, the new system won't let you work around it by approving first and trying to mail the most recently approved (because the only ordering options are first name and last name). On both the member listing and email communications pages, one should be able to filter by status, date joined, etc.

I also see that there are several subscription status options - including
"Active"
"Terminated"
"Terminated, Active" <- dunno what this magical status is...

Painful enough that you cannot opt to view more than 100 members at a time, one does not get any meaningful pagination - If you are giving me 20 pages of 100 results, I should at least have the option of going to page N rather than click next, next, next several times for a slow loading page.

Userbility problems aside, I think we should get an explanation about what has happened to member data, what we have left, etc so we can stop speculating.

Regards,

Dewole.
Nigeria Chapter President

On 2/12/2019 6:09 PM, Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond wrote:
Hello all,

I'd be interested in your comments, as I have realised (from the feedback received on today's Chapter Advisory Council Steering Committee) that the UK Chapter is not the only Chapter with Membership software problems. Throughout the week, I have been grappling with various problems brought forward by the new Internet Society membership system.

Leaving small problems to the side, there are two main problems that the Internet Society UK England Chapter is facing:

1. The inability to download a list of all our members in Excel format. When we started using the ISOC AMS system, we transferred all of our member's details to the AMS. We even registered with the Data Protection Registrar, in case the details were going to be leaving the UK. Whilst the Internet Society runs the AMS system, we believe that we are the data controller. Now we cannot retrieve the data of our own members and the question comes as to "who owns members"? I remember this debate poisoned discussions in early 2000 when the Internet Society was about to collapse for lack of funds and at the end of the day, the matter was dug into the ground and full access to the membership records given to the Chapters about their own members. Now the new system makes things a lot harder for the Chapter to view and download records of its own members. This simply cannot be the case.

2. Emailing members using the system: here there are two main problems: first, it is now impossible to email a subset of our members, it's either all of them, or 1 of them, but there is no ability to select a subset of members, for example living in town X, and email them. Functionality loss - which I had already pointed out during the demonstration calls a few months ago, but it appears that someone has deliberately decided to ignore this important feature. That's a technical thing that should be fixed easily.

The second problem, possibly more of a problem because I do not think that it is technical, but is a "feature" that was added, is that we now appear not to be able to email all of our members. With the decision of ISOC to go through the toughest regimes of GDPR acceptance by asking for explicit acceptance of GDPR terms, we went from 3400 to 1490 members. Whilst this is a pill that's difficult to swallow, I understand the purpose and conservative direction that ISOC took for this - the culture of "safety first" prevailing these days. That said, we now have another challenge, in that out of these 1490 members, we appear to only be able to email 1098 of them - because it appears that 400 of our "members" have "decided not to receive emails".
First, I think that the email opt out button is very badly marked, as it cuts you off all communication and signs you off all of the mailing lists that you might have subscribed to. In my test, I have managed to sign myself off email mailing lists without being able to find a way to put myself back on them - for example the Internet Policy..... But worse still, I have found that my own colleagues in the leadership team have opted out of emails - perhaps unwittingly.

What good is a Chapter member that opts out of emails?

How in the world will I get in touch with members that have opted out of emails? Are these people completely cut-off from the Internet Society? Are they receiving *any* communication at all from the Internet Society, or is it only the Chapter that is blocked from being able to email them? Do they know they have opted out?
To me, these 400 people that the Chapter cannot email are as good as dead wood - why not remove them from Internet Society membership as well?

I'd be interested in your comments if you are faced with similar problems.
Kindest regards,

Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
(personal views)

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