Today, or tomorrow (depending on how long ago you signed up for Wikidot), you will be getting a nice new shiny Wikidot Newsletter in your mailbox. We started the newsletter project in August, and it's taken us some time to get it all working, but from now on we'll be able to send this out once a month.
The newsletter is meant to keep the 99.9% of Wikidot users who don't read this blog or the forums informed about what's going on. The way it works is that we collect the most interesting stories about what's happening in and around Wikidot, and publish these on the http://news.wikidot.com site.
Then with some magic scripts, thanks to Michal, we take a snapshot of the News site and turn that into a nice HTML email. This results in 30GB of email traffic, which is why it takes more than a day to send out. With the HTML, is a nice text version for people who do not read HTML email.
By sending out an HTML page as email, we want to remind Wikidot users of what they can make using Wikidot. The news site uses a custom CSS, ListPages module, tags, per-page comments, and so on. If you want a similar site, check-out the techblog application template.
This is a great tool, and I very much want to figure out how to use it, to better reach users of our own site.
Thing is, most registered users signed up mainly to participate in some particular site. Sending monthly emailed newsletters to them about Wikidot results in unwanted email spam. Sure, it's possible to unsubscribe from the newsletters. But it's more likely that many users will simply label the newsletter emails as spam, which causes more email filters kick in to exclude Wikidot, I imagine.
Really, this newsletter content is focused on wiki admins and moderators — the folks who are most actively building the site. Default newsletter settings for them should be "on", for everyone else, the default setting should be "off". If "off" isn't to the team's liking, another (somewhat less spammy) alternative might be to mail newsletters as PMs.
But the functionality is tremendous. Email broadcasting is fundamental to building wiki participation. But it needs to be focused and moderated, otherwise users tune it out and turn it off — potentially to the detriment of everyone.
I strongly agree. Only site admins/mods need the newsletter. Even if it's good advertisement for Wikidot's amazing power, it's not really relevant to most members.
Looks awesome though. Really like the design of the News site.
Nice job
A - S I M P L E - P L A N by ARTiZEN a startingpoint for simple wikidot solutions.
Got Mine….. in the spam folder.
HAHAHA. Recieved my Newsletter on "Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 2:13 AM" in the SPAM folder.
No images work….. :-(
No links work :-( :-(
Menus are rendered but they are totally useless :-( :-( :-(
Kenneth Tsang (@jxeeno)
It works perfectly fine for me. Can you answer a few questions to satisfy my curiosity? :)
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
EDIT: I found the solution for Gmail. Just click on the little arrow on the side of the message… and select "Report NOT pishing". Then you can view images by clicking on the link.
Kenneth Tsang (@jxeeno)
I still have not received this e-mail. I don't even get notifications. Can that be fixed?
Try changing your account email address to Gmail, and then redirecting all emails to your usual account from there. Can't remember who it was (Ed?) but others are also experiencing this problem.
It is thought that the Comcast ISP has added Wikidot to a spam list and is blocking all emails from them.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
It was me who reported this. See http://community.wikidot.com/forum/t-196788.
Switching my Wikidot email address from Comcast to GMail worked. I then forwarded my GMail back to Comcast and the notifications are now flowing back in. This is a workaround only and doesn't address the real issue. If Wikidot did indeed land on some blacklist, then this is serious. Comcast is one of the biggest ISPs in the US. It's a pain that hotmail doesn't work, but this could be a major headache if users with Comcast accounts (or other ISPs that may use the same list) can't get mail from Wikidot.
-Ed
Community Admin
I haven't got this Newsletter either.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
Which ISP, Brunhilda? If a list can be compiled of those that did not work, that might help with tracking down the blacklist and the list of ISPs that use it.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Responding here in an effort to get this discussion in one place…
I don't think Comcast maintains their own blacklist - I suspect they subscribe to one or more of the lists provided by others. That is what concerns me, especially since others are reporting the same issue with (apparently) ISPs other than Comcast. This is not a good situation for us and for Wikidot if it's true.
I ask again… Can you see the reasons for delivery failure? Those bounce back messages might give a clue to which blacklist(s) Wikidot is on, if any.
-Ed
Community Admin
@Pieter,
Comcast has a form here that looks pretty easy to fill out and submit:
http://www.comcastsupport.com/Forms/NET/blockedprovider.asp
The problem I ran into tonight is that my son forgot his password and now can't get the e-mail with the verification code to reset it.
Wikidot seems to come up clean here: http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx, so that's some good news.
-Ed
Community Admin
Yes, I already saw that. In progress…
Portfolio
At the moment, the problem with Gmail is that:
This is just my thought….. maybe there is a different story with the "i-can't-get-my-newsletter-problem"
Kenneth Tsang (@jxeeno)
If the mail was getting through marked as SPAM, I could deal with that. The problem is that it appears Wikidot got blacklisted by Comcast for sure (maybe others?) and when that happens any mail they send gets bounced back and doesn't even get a sniff of my Comcast mailbox.
Everything has been flowing fine through my GMail account. If something gets marked as spam in GMail, it's easy to find and move out of the spam folder.
-Ed
Community Admin
We'll look at what's happened with Comcast, and at Kenneth's suggestion that the IP mismatch could cause emails to be tagged as spam.
Portfolio
Thanks. I'm not trying to be a pest, I'm just concerned that this might be the start of bigger issues.
-Ed
Community Admin