The following is from another site, and most of it is foreign to our experiences here, but it has useful info. for those seeking to know how to use this site and how it works;
Handling Private Messages and Emails... Please read
It has come to the attention of the administrative team as well as other members on Temple Illuminatis that there are concerns about receiving mass emails and private messages. As a means to bring resolve, we will offer the following suggestions so that all may enjoy their time here while corresponding with their friends and other members.
There are two issues here I would like to address, the email notifications and the private messages.
Emails: We understand the Ning network by default sets the user up to receive notification emails to the personal email attached to your account. There are ways to stem the tidal wave of notifications you receive
Follow these steps to control the amount of email notifications you receive:
1. Under your name on the right side where you see your inbox you will see settings located there. Click this link and it will take you to a new page called My Settings
2. On the left side you will see an email link and it will open up your email settings. There you will see a long list of choices of what kinds of notifications you will receive if the box is checked.
3. Uncheck all boxes you do not wish to receive emails from, or if you choose to receive no email notifications at all, use the last box that says ‘I do not want to receive emails from Temple Illuminatus’
4. Click save.
This will control the flow of email notifications to your email. You can also control conversations and group notifications individually. In every post or reply that you are involved with, you do have an option to turn those notifications off as well. You can manually stop any conversation being emailed to your box by clicking the words ‘stop following’. This will halt the emails being sent to your inbox. In the groups you can also choose to stop notifications being sent as well by clicking the option beneath the comment box to ‘stop following’.
Private messages
We know that there are many members who enjoy receiving private messages and there are some who are getting overwhelmed by too many messages. We know this is a Ning situation and feature; therefore, we have to become aware of who we are sending private messages to.
Things to be aware of with Ning and personal messages:
You cannot send a private message to people unless they are on your friends list. The exception to this rule is when a mass group emailing is sent out and you ‘reply all’. Then even those that are not on your friends list will too get the forwarded email. Rest assured though, ‘reply all’ does not add any your friends that are not on the list to the mass emailing, it only replies to those currently receiving that email.
We do not want to discourage the use of Private Messages because we know so many enjoy receiving the messages. I think the issue here is when everyone clicks the reply all button when responding. So therefore we ask for respectful interaction, by not clicking reply all, but by simply using the stand alone reply button.
If you are receiving private messages you do not wish to receive, please just reply to the sender (not reply all) to ask to be removed from any future mass messages. We feel that the messages being received are not of ill intent, just a bit much for some.
If you are sending out a mass email, there are ways to handle this to get around the fact that Ning does not have an option to create a group email button. My suggestion is, send your email out to those that respond to you. Create a base email and choose those people you would like to send a message to and leave out those who do not wish to receive the emails. We are trying to find a happy medium here, since often, people like conversing with you in private but don’t want to be removed from your friends list due to the mass mailings.
You can also remove a person from your friends list to stop the mass mailings, but by doing so, it will eliminate your ability to send that person a private message and/or view their profile depending on privacy settings. So this is going to take some work on the part of both the sender and receiver to keep everyone happy.
We don’t and will not discourage the use of PM’s which includes mass messages to those who don’t mind and actually enjoy receiving them. But we hope there is enough respect for both sender and receiver to communicate with one another to be added to or removed from any mass emails that are sent out. Communication is the primary key here as it almost always brings resolve to nearly every issue.
Another suggestion that came up and I think is a good suggestion is instead of sending a mass email out to use the blog feature within the community. There is a little button at the bottom of the post that says ‘share’ , click that button and it will open up options of who you can share your blog with, from there choose the more options button and it will take you to a new page where you can check share with friends. When doing so, this automatically checks everyone on your friend list. Hit save or send. This way, everyone will only get one email asking them to join you on the conversation. If they reply, they will continue getting notifications of replies but if they don’t reply they will receive no further notifications for that particular blog. Since it is of my belief that the main concern is that people are getting too many messages in their private inbox, this seems like a viable alternative. Yes you can use your blogs to say happy ___________ (fill in the blank) and the nice thing about this feature is that others in the community can also join in on the fun if they so desire.
I am going to do some further research and find out if there are options within Ning to create group mailings which would make it so that the sender did not have to go through their list of friends every single time to choose who should receive it and who shouldn’t. Sort of a distribution list so to speak. Keep in mind that you are also able to communicate with your friends via comments and personal blogs. But in the meantime, please be open to communication with each other.
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