What do we do for users with no email address?

ahanson commented 13 years ago

Some users come in without an email address? Should we set them up with gmail or yahoo? Or should they get a class in email? Or should there be another identifier for individuals?

ahanson commented 13 years ago

Disable this check if you are local to freegeek, or if staff sets you up in person.. random ppl can't join remotely without an email address, or else we get taken over by spammers.

eads commented 13 years ago

I felt like everyone at this discussion -- you, Calvin, James, and Jimmie -- all had really important points and I'm curious how we should proceed. This is a great issue, really. Hey, look, it's the intersection of technology, process, and organizational ethics! Here's my 2 cents:

As Calvin said, FreeGeek is supposed to be a digital literacy (slash survival skill) organization, so asking people to have an email address or sign up for one as part of the orientation process isn't exactly onerous. At the same time, like Jimmie said, we then probably need at least a mini email class to avoid the problem that James pointed out, which is that people will treat this as a "throwaway" email address. There may also just be some people out there who aren't comfortable providing an email address, or don't want one.

We've talked in past about what we'd like people to disclose about themselves, and it's pretty much "what should we call you?" and "are you under 18?" (for legal reasons). We probably need to have this conversation again, but the basic idea there still stands as policy.

Here's a possible course of action that covers most of the bases:

Create a special user with permissions to access a custom form that allows users to be registered without email addresses. Then volunteers can either create accounts themselves or a staff person can create accounts for them from a computer logged in as this special user during orientation. Also allow staff to access this form from their personal accounts.
Strongly encourage volunteers to get email addresses and get Internet literate. They'll get a lot more out of FreeGeek and their computers if they do. But we also recognize that not everybody finds online life satisfying.
Allow Facebook, Twitter, etc signup and login -- I'm not sure what I think about this! It seems practical, yet could also present some problems.

jimglover commented 13 years ago

I like all of the ideas. But sometimes everything is too much. I don't know if so many ways to access the site will be efficient. I like encouraging volunteers to become internet literate, there will be those who love it and those who will not want to go through the trouble of class or lectures for that matter. Should we aim our task at a particular group and the rest can round out the learning curb? What I am saying is, is there a tendency for volunteers to like internet tutelage or is there more of a tendency toward them wanting to do their own thing and not having staff interfere? In any case, I think we should go the way the volunteer winds blow. Freegeek is for them and they may be the best decider's of how they want to access it. I like the facebook and twitter logins. It's sorta laid back and provides and relaxed type of vibe for volunteering. I think that it will help volunteers keep freegeek on the mind too - often one might have to be reminded they have to go volunteer to build up enough hours to build their own box.

eads commented 13 years ago

+1 to Jimmie's questions and points. My feeling is to use the most flexible and realistic solution and simply not require an email address. I can bang out a special user, role, and design that will accomodate signing up new users during orientation in an evening or we can do it in a development meeting. Since we don't HAVE a class, video, or other resource that we can point people to so they can get an email address, I say we simply drop the requirement and strongly encourage people to get one. And bundle some web pages (with embedded videos, etc) with FreeGeek computers that document how use it and provide instruction on getting going online.

On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 9:02 PM, glover reply@reply.github.com wrote:

I like all of the ideas. But sometimes everything is too much. I don't know if so many ways to access the site will be efficient. I like encouraging volunteers to become internet literate, there will be those who love it and those who will not want to go through the trouble of class or lectures for that matter. Should we aim our task at a particular group and the rest can round out the learning curb? What I am saying is, is there a tendency for volunteers to like internet tutelage or is there more of a tendency toward them wanting to do their own thing and not having staff interfere? In any case, I think we should go the way the volunteer winds blow. Freegeek is for them and they may be the best decider's of how they want to access it. I like the facebook and twitter logins. It's sorta laid back and provides and relaxed type of vibe for volunteering. I think that it will help volunteers keep freegeek on the mind too - often one might have to be reminded they have to go volunteer to build up enough hours to build their own box.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/freegeekchicago/townsquare/issues/23#issuecomment-1415290

jimglover commented 13 years ago

Agreed. This will make things simple. Sort of a step drop, get everything done, score a touchdown type of procedure and everyones happy and can go back to playing with computers like they wanted to do in the first place.

eads commented 13 years ago

If you must add complexity, consider adding it in the future once you know what you need. Thanks for the feedback -- it's nice to get some confirmation, as well as a better perspective on volunteer concerns.

eads commented 13 years ago

I added this to alpha-1 milestone. We'll need it when we launch.

jimglover commented 13 years ago

When is the alpha1 milestone, I asked because I am mistakenly under the impression we passed it but it was "okay" because we continue to make progress i.e. our last meeting.

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 12:04 AM, eads < reply@reply.github.com>wrote:

I added this to alpha-1 milestone. We'll need it when we launch.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:

https://github.com/freegeekchicago/townsquare/issues/23#issuecomment-1423069

eads commented 13 years ago

I moved alpha-1 to about a month off.

On 6/23/11, glover reply@reply.github.com wrote:

When is the alpha1 milestone, I asked because I am mistakenly under the impression we passed it but it was "okay" because we continue to make progress i.e. our last meeting.

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 12:04 AM, eads < reply@reply.github.com>wrote:

I added this to alpha-1 milestone. We'll need it when we launch.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:

https://github.com/freegeekchicago/townsquare/issues/23#issuecomment-1423069

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/freegeekchicago/townsquare/issues/23#issuecomment-1424829

EricTendian commented 13 years ago

What about if a user wants to reset their password? Wouldn't we need an email account for that?

eads commented 13 years ago

Okay, I just released alpha-1 into the wild. Woo! This is a solved problem in that version: Email verification is required to sign up for an account, but a user can exist in Drupal without an email address provided they are created by an administrator or staff person. We can collect email addresses from anyone who wants to participate in the site, see their hours, etc.

@erict15: You're right, and an email address will be required to log in. But if volunteers REALLY wish to not disclose their email address or don't have one, we now account for that.

freegeekchicago / townsquare

What do we do for users with no email address? #23