Gregory Szorc's blog

My Opinions About the Case Daily

The Case Daily launched today.  Judging by the way it is implemented, it looks like the concept emerged today as well.  (I know I am wrong on that front because I heard about this destined for failure idea in mid-December.)

Now, let me elaborate on my opinions of the Case Daily.

What is good about the Case Daily

• The Case Daily is a step forward in conveying large amounts of information frequently and to a large audience.
• The Case Daily will significantly decrease, if not eliminate, the annoying mass e-mails that clutter your inbox (1, 2, 3, 4)

What is bad about the Case Daily

• You can't unsubscribe (from my understanding, ITS was directed to set up the mailing list so this wasn't possible, though I could be wrong)
  
• The HTML anchors are broken (perhaps just an issue with the first version)
• There is no archive of old editions (again, hopefully an issue with the first version)
• There is no syndicated feed available for the information (although screen-scraping shouldn't be too challenging, but why should someone have to do this?)
  
• Submission of info means sending an e-mail!  Who designs an information system with no web interface?  Perhaps if someone ask well enough, USG will give up theirs to power this thing.  It has unsubscribe and archive support, plus HTML and a pretty web interface to power it all,
• It is bloated.  Now, instead of separate e-mails targeted to just students or faculty, it appears everything is lumped into one.  For example, in the first issue, I saw a "Personnel" and "Accolades" section.  I don't want to see if the Law School hired a professor.  Too bad I can't enter my preferences to not receive this section.

My Conclusions

The pros of the Case Daily come from a 40,000 ft perspective.  The cons are from a direct fly-over.  This tells me one thing, The Case Daily was dreamed up by management and implemented with minimal consultation to knowledgeable personnel about the technology involved.  I feel that had someone with knowledge of RSS or this blogging system been consulted, the Case Daily would be a totaly different product and this entry would be praising the product instead of despising it.

Post published comments

The Case Wiki article Case Daily has instructions for "unsubscribing" from the Case Daily.

You can ping this entry by using http://blog.case.edu/gps10/mt-tb.cgi/5288 .

If the email is not readable in your email application and you do not check you email every single day, it appears the content will be lost to you, since the link "if you have problems viewing this page" points to no archive.

When I worked at another University, a message like this was distributed only once a week, and two distinct versions existed (for students or for employees). When I worked in a corporate library, all postings like this were posted on the internal portal that we all used.

As soon as that e-mail showed up in my inbox, I knew it was only a matter of time before you would comment on it. I have to agree with you on this. Condensing things is a good idea. Turning it into a once-a-day mass e-mail is absolutely horrific. There's no reason to be sending something like this out once a day, but if you put that option there, you can be certain that they'll be cluttering our inboxes with even more useless information.

An RSS feed or a blog would be so much better for this. A blog would allow archiving, searching, etc. and, if the pieces of news were divided into appropriate categories, it would even allow people to pick and choose the RSS feeds that carried the content that was worthwhile to them.

I like the direction we are heading with the newsletter. My first impression was that daily seems almost too often, but I guess we'll see.

While RSS is a nice feature, I think it is only a feature, not the answer. When I was reading the 2005 OCLC report on perceptions of information systems, it highlighted that less than 5% of the public (over 3000 people surveyed) are familiar with RSS. You and I Greg love tech and RSS (it really is great and up and coming) but with less than 5% familiarity RSS is not a solution.

(see the nice graph on page 30 here on how people acquire information)

In response to Aaron's comments, it is worth noting that when you are given the option to unsubscribe and RSS is available, then users who know and appreciate the value of RSS will take advantage of it. Since we already have a RSS generating mechanism (this blog service), the overhead for doing it is very low. The only reason for not using the Case Blog system is privacy of information. Currently, the privacy controls on the Case Blog service aren't enabled. Perhaps one day...

Nicole's idea is right on. It is very similar to my My Proposal To Mass E-mails.

implemented with minimal consultation to knowledgeable personnel about the technology involved. I feel that had someone with knowledge of RSS or this blogging system been consulted, the Case Daily would be a totaly different product and this entry would be praising the product instead of despising it.

I was consulted and involved in the project since day one. I raised concerns regarding "information overload," "information management", "'interruptable' vs. 'non-interruptable' avenues," and all that. In the end, though, this is the way the people wanted the system to work; thus, it works this way.

There is no archive of old editions (again, hopefully an issue with the first version)

There are; they are just hidden inside the complexities of Sympa and a couple of run-time tweaks I had to make to get over the first-send kinks. But an archive is there, and once everything is fleshed out, the link into the archive will be easy to find.

There is no syndicated feed available for the information

There are RSS feeds. Sympa acts as an email-to-RSS gateway for public viewable lists. Albeit, a very rudimentary email->RSS gateway with non-validating syndicated feeds. All it would need is someone to step into Sympa and fix the TT2 templates to output valid Atom. I keep mentioning to Ed that one day... one day... I would sit down with him and we can go through the syndicated feed templates to get them up to snuff. One day...

Anyways, you can check out one of the feeds at
https://lists.case.edu/wws/rss/latest_arc/blog-admin?count=5.

While RSS is a nice feature, I think it is only a feature, not the answer.

You just stick the RSS feed into a named portlet called "Case Daily News Portlet." Then everyone on the portal gets auto-subscribed to it. People who know RSS from a portlet (or people who just don't use the portal), can remove (or never see) the "Case Daily News Portlet" and subscribe (or not) to the feed in a news aggregator.

And lest people not forget, each blog comes with a "subscribe to this blog via email" doohickey. So if the blog system were used, you have subscribe/unsubscribe email newsletter plus RSS feeds plus nice archives and URLs plus the searchability-fu plus...

Or... ya know... we just carpet-bomb people with emails. That works, too.

The only reason for not using the Case Blog system is privacy of information. Currently, the privacy controls on the Case Blog service aren't enabled. Perhaps one day...

Oh, that's such a can of worms. Shibboleth gets you partway there. You can use something like http://www.openidp.org/ to fill in the last bit of functionality. You can work up a mod_auth(n|z)_sympa that could do some of it, too.

The "coolest" idea I have had is mod_authz_foaf. You embed FOAF data directly into your XHTML document or you do a <link type="application/foaf+xml" rel="viewers" href="foo.rdf" /> and only those listed in that FOAF data can view the HTML page. (Hand-wavery must occur for the authn portion of that.)

But this is all just crazy-talk.

Oh, but y'all missed the greatest irony of the launch of "the one-per-day" email newsletter! I got a mass email about Research Showcase a 35 minutes before it and another about the bookstore's hours on MLK day an 90 minutes later. So much for one per day!

Hey, check it out: blog.case.edu/casedaily

I was just about to post the link to this, but I see you've found it! http://blog.case.edu/casedaily is perfectly functional but officially in "test" mode. (I may still tweak a bit of formatting.)

Kevin and I are working to find a solution to our formatting issues. HTML e-mail presents certain challenges in that each e-mail client sends out and/or presents HTML e-mails differently and most offer little support for CSS. In the end we may find outselves using deprecated items such as . We'll see, it's a work in progess.

Oops. I meant "deprecated items such as font codes."

I'd like to see a non-HTML version of it availible as an option.

I recently emailed the case daily staff to complain about the fact that you cannot unsubscribe from the case-daily email, which I think basically makes it one step away from spam. This is what I said:

-----Original Message-----
From: Brent D. Weinberg
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 11:40 AM
To: 'case-daily@case.edu'
Subject: case daily

I have a quick suggestion for the case daily email. Provide an option to opt out of receiving it, or perhaps a weekly version for those who don't want it every day. I realize that the sentiment behind the email, consolidating any of a number of emails by providing a unified news email, is a good one. However, the reality is that this email is just another bulk email to clutter the inboxes of those who can hardly find their legitimate email in the first place. Moreover, it's not likely to cut down on the amount of other bulk emails sent to people by their departments and others. In fact, it's most likely to add 5 messages per week. I like to hear news about Case as much as the next guy, but really, every day? Those who are that interested can certainly check out the RSS feed.

I doubt if anyone will take this comment seriously, but I felt that at least someone should mention that another email just contributes to an already messy mail system.

Thanks,
Brent Weinberg

----------------------

Here is their reply:

From: Case Daily [mailto:case-daily@case.edu]
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 12:32 PM
To: Brent D. Weinberg
Subject: Re: case daily

Hi, Brent,

Thanks for writing. An FAQ on Case daily is available at http://blog.case.edu/casedaily/faqs.html

There it says: It is important for members of the Case community to receive messages from the university. Valuable information-facility closings and human resource notices, among others-will be included in Case Daily. If you do not want to receive Case Daily, there is a way for you to "opt out" utilizing the filtering tools in your email client.

Hope that helps at least a little bit.

----------------------

I find it interesting that their solution is for you to set up a filter in your email client. And they call this opting out. Of course, I wrote them back:

----------------------

From: Brent D. Weinberg
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 1:11 PM
To: 'Case Daily'
Subject: RE: case daily

Thanks for the reply. Of course I can set up a filter in Outlook to move or delete the message. Additionally, I could set a filter in the iPlanet mail administrator to reject the message out right, or using the Case spam filter to move it to my junk mail. However, writing a custom rejection filter does not constitute opting out. That’s something like saying I can opt out just by deleting the message with my delete key. Moreover, that statement in the FAQ is a little bit devious, saying that there is “a way” to opt out. It might as well say, “We won’t make it easy for you to opt out because we don’t want you to, but we acknowledge that more advanced computer user will know a way to get around it. Sorry average computer user.” Until you can actually opt out, case-daily is little more than spam.

Brent

----------------------

It looks like they are either unaware that it's just another mass mailing to most people, or they have been specifically instructed not to allow people to opt out. Either way, the whole thing is ridiculous.

It appears they are still playing with and adjusting their implementation. I like forward to more improvements.

I personally do not label these messages as "spam", rather or not I read them. I think as an employee or student, you have an obligation to know what is happening with your organization. Case needs to force this on people, so they protect themselves from hearing "I did not know" when someone did not see a communication. I think a combination of a forced subscription to an email that allows people to unsubscribe, plus a RSS feed is the best solution. At first, Case can be insured you received at least an initial email and than it is up to you to pick if you want it and how you will receive it.

I would prefer that the RSS feed consisted of each item individually with tagging (faculty, staff, student, community, in the news, etc.), so I can read only the relevant items.

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