A community administrator, alehandrof, is exploring ways to increase engagement in their recently migrated community. They considered changing the digest frequency, but then discovered the “bootstrap mode” setting. However, they’re unsure if setting a high number (e.g., 9999) would override existing users’ digest settings and what would happen if users don’t log in to their email for an extended period.
After further research, alehandrof decided against changing the setting, realizing that the digest mode doesn’t work as they thought. They learned that the digest (now called “summary”) only surfaces “top” posts, making a daily email unnecessary. codinghorror suggested trying the setting, but wasn’t sure of the outcome.
I recently migrated an old community that has a few hundred members, but was not very active. We’re making positive steps, but our engagement is still quite low. I think changing digest frequency might help (or alienate users, one of the two ).
I just found out about this setting:
If I change the “bootstrap mode” setting to a high number like 9999, would this override existing users’ digest setting?
If so, what happens if people don’t log in to their email for a couple of weeks? It’s summer and this is an academic community, so some people might not be monitoring their institutional email account very closely. Would they return to a huge pile of digest emails or do they stop after a while?
I don’t think I’ll go ahead with this. I only now realised that the digest mode doesn’t really work the way I though it did:
I thought it was a digest like that of Google Groups or traditional email lists, where a daily email makes sense (if there are new posts. But since the digest (renamed “summary” as of 1.6) only surface “top” posts, a daily email won’t make sense.
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