p.s. There is another group I'm a member of which also carries this warning on their home page ("please look for the questionnaire and notify us if you didn't receive it" etc.). So I don't think this is an uncommon problem.
In our group's case, several times after contacting the pending member through my own email address (outside of the system) and asking them to check their spam file for the notice, they've either found the notice in their spam or, what's more concerning, have not found it at all in several cases. It seems to elude the system entirely sometimes. I think Shal once speculated that this is a deeper sort of spam filtering by certain email providers. But it's been impossible to prove.
We now have on our home page a bold-faced notice that people who apply for membership should be sure to check their spam folders for the questionnaire.?
Another Groups.io message that often seems to go into spam as well is the confirmation email. So in the pending member notice (assuming they got it), we also tell the member to be sure to look for and click on the confirmation email.
J
On Sun, Jan 22, 2017 at 2:19 PM, Jeff Powell <jrpstonecarver@...> wrote:
Understood. That's partly why I sent email by hand, from my personal account (not from ) to the subscribing addresses. I figured such emails wouldn't be as obviously routed into the spam folder, though they do mention by name in the body of the message.
I wish there was a way to prove or disprove this.
I figure if someone really wanted into our group and they don't get in, they will come back and ask again. We don't ban them... just not allow them in. It's not the end of the world in any case.
I wish there was a way to really confirm this sort of thing. If I cannot get people to reply to the Pending Subscriber message - despite resending it 5 or 6 times and sending them a personal email on the same topic - maybe I should just fail their request and move on.
I would think there is a way for to track overall membership failure rates. If lots of people are requesting membership and not getting it, that would probably imply lots of spammers out there in the world. And those I am happy to ignore.
