ECF enewsletter

[Mick Norris]

How many of the people posting here got the bulletin dated 25 January 2016?

I got that - it was titled "ECF Publicity Manager Bulletin".
But I have not got the most recent one.

Mark, how many bulletins have you sent out?
Is it possible the sending process silently failed at some point?

Emails from Mark Jordan:
ECF Newsletter 2 was sent to me on Monday
ECF Newsletter 1 was sent to me on 24 March

Emails from English Chess Federation:
ECF Publicity Manager Bulletin sent on 25 January
Compliments of the season sent 17 December
Jovanka wins silver sent on 3 December

I also get emails from ECF Schools

I'm not sure that's helpful, but there you go

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Thanks. I am missing the ECF newsletters editions 1 and 2. The ECF clearly have my email address, so something is going wrong at their end or something changed at my end that is blocking it. I hope I don't have to email them to sort this out. Would a record have been kept of whether I was on the mailing list that was used to send out the ECF newsletters 1 and 2?

[Carl Hibbard]

If it's sent as a simple email with just lots of BCC it's almost impossible to track current status.

[Mark Jordan]

Hi Chris,

You must be on the mailing list as you received at least one of my previous bulletins which came from the same source. I can only think your spam filter is stopping it getting through. The newsletter contains quite a few links which can be seen by the filters as suspicious. You could see if you can adjust your filter settings to let it know that emails from Mark Jordan via sut5.co.uk are safe. As I said, you can access the current one on the website and if you email me your email address I'll send you the first to save you hunting back down the website to find the link for that one. I'm at [email protected]

[Christopher Kreuzer]

It is not in my spam folder. Some ISPs apply filters before anything reaches a spam folder. Looking into that would be a pain. I'll email you.

EDIT: And issue 2 has arrived in my inbox from ECF Office Manager Gary Willson, thanks!

[MartinCarpenter]

With the way the e-mail is currently constructed there's a decent chance that a mail server somewhere will simply block it. Wouldn't even get as far as a spam filter then It might not even be repeatable as the route e-mails take from place to place isn't fixed.

A link to a webpage with the newsletter on/a PDF attachment might work rather more reliably?

Old fashioned perhaps but e-mail is, after all, meant to about sending text files to each other
(Some of us set their e-mail programs to display html e-mails as the raw text!).

[Jonathan Bryant]

How many of the people posting here got the bulletin dated 25 January 2016?

I got that - it was titled "ECF Publicity Manager Bulletin".
But I have not got the most recent one.

Mark, how many bulletins have you sent out?
Is it possible the sending process silently failed at some point?

Emails from Mark Jordan:
ECF Newsletter 2 was sent to me on Monday
ECF Newsletter 1 was sent to me on 24 March

Emails from English Chess Federation:
ECF Publicity Manager Bulletin sent on 25 January
Compliments of the season sent 17 December
Jovanka wins silver sent on 3 December

I also get emails from ECF Schools

I'm not sure that's helpful, but there you go

Don’t think I’ve got any of those. I don’t mind missing the newsletter. I do mind not even knowing I’ve been missing stuff.

[Roger de Coverly]

I do mind not even knowing I’ve been missing stuff.

Perhaps this is worth following up with your ISP, as to why they are in effect censoring your email.

[Jonathan Bryant]

I do mind not even knowing I’ve been missing stuff.

Perhaps this is worth following up with your ISP, as to why they are in effect censoring your email.

I could but I refer you to Chris’s comments above. Also Martin’s.

[Mark Jordan]

I do mind not even knowing I’ve been missing stuff.

Perhaps this is worth following up with your ISP, as to why they are in effect censoring your email.

I don't know that ISPs are consciously looking to censor email traffic (though for all I know they might be!) but if some of them have stopped the Newsletter getting through it has to be more to do with security features which are designed to protect their customers from getting viruses etc. Most subscribers do appear to have received the newsletter and, so far, I think we've only had 5 people complaining that they haven't. Of course we may get more complaints, some may not bother to tell us, and some may not realise they were going to be sent the newsletter in the first place and so, of course, won't alert us. Chances are there are more that didn't get through.

This is the longest and most complicated email I believe ECF has ever sent out and either the system we're using is not quite up to the job or the ISPs are stopping it, or perhaps a bit of both. Given this experience we're looking at how we can improve the efficiency of distribution but, in the meantime and in future, the eNewsletter is also available by a link on the website.

[MartinCarpenter]

You could maybe e-mail a decent sized sample (or everyone) with the website link and ask them to complain if they didn't get it the original? Would give a much better idea if there is a genuinely significant problem.

The website link is definitely a good idea whatever

[Alex Holowczak]

Which e-mail providers are you using? I ask because when entries land in my inbox for tournaments, there is sometimes a problem with entries made with a Yahoo e-mail address.

[Mick Norris]

I don't know that ISPs are consciously looking to censor email traffic (though for all I know they might be!) but if some of them have stopped the Newsletter getting through it has to be more to do with security features which are designed to protect their customers from getting viruses etc. Most subscribers do appear to have received the newsletter and, so far, I think we've only had 5 people complaining that they haven't. Of course we may get more complaints, some may not bother to tell us, and some may not realise they were going to be sent the newsletter in the first place and so, of course, won't alert us. Chances are there are more that didn't get through.

This is the longest and most complicated email I believe ECF has ever sent out and either the system we're using is not quite up to the job or the ISPs are stopping it, or perhaps a bit of both. Given this experience we're looking at how we can improve the efficiency of distribution but, in the meantime and in future, the eNewsletter is also available by a link on the website.

Mark

I think the eNewsltter is a good idea, and we certainly want to support ECF communicating, and your efforts at publicity

You do need to think about whether you want to put it (immediately) on the website for non-members to read, whilst failing (for whatever reason) to get the emails to ECF members

[Mark Jordan]

I don't know that ISPs are consciously looking to censor email traffic (though for all I know they might be!) but if some of them have stopped the Newsletter getting through it has to be more to do with security features which are designed to protect their customers from getting viruses etc. Most subscribers do appear to have received the newsletter and, so far, I think we've only had 5 people complaining that they haven't. Of course we may get more complaints, some may not bother to tell us, and some may not realise they were going to be sent the newsletter in the first place and so, of course, won't alert us. Chances are there are more that didn't get through.

This is the longest and most complicated email I believe ECF has ever sent out and either the system we're using is not quite up to the job or the ISPs are stopping it, or perhaps a bit of both. Given this experience we're looking at how we can improve the efficiency of distribution but, in the meantime and in future, the eNewsletter is also available by a link on the website.

Mark

I think the eNewsltter is a good idea, and we certainly want to support ECF communicating, and your efforts at publicity

You do need to think about whether you want to put it (immediately) on the website for non-members to read, whilst failing (for whatever reason) to get the emails to ECF members

We decided to make it available to everyone who wants it rather than just to members. If a member does not get it in their inbox, for whatever reason, surely they would be as keen, if not more so, than non-members to have access to it? If we delayed the link on the website for a day or two we'd probably irk a few members in any case! Hopefully we'll have the email issues sorted out as much as we can from our end by next issue, at which point the problem will be minimised.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I think one of the points about email vs website is that people have very individual browsing and email habits. Some people will hardly ever go to the ECF website, but come here (or check email) a lot. I am one of those people. There are so many websites out there, that most people (I suspect) only have a few that they visit regularly.

Does the ECF website use RSS?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

Ah, I see it does! Top right-hand corner. I'll go and do that then...