We’re making changes to how the all-members email discussion list works so that the list works better for everyone.
Google’s Gmail service is very particular about what it considers real email and what it considers spam. (Understandably; spam is annoying.) The problems we’ve had in the past month on the list arose because Gmail got more strict about these rules recently.
We’ve moved the email list to a new home (members@hthc.ca) and carefully followed all of Google’s new technical rules. Gmail is saying “OK, yes, this is real mail” for most things now, but it’s sending important list notifications — like “confirm your subscription request!” — into spam folders.
We think this is because we look “new” to Gmail, and once we have a bit of “sender reputation” this filtering will stop being an issue. To test this out, we want you to subscribe yourself to the new list and let us know if the response messages are sent to your spam folder instead of your inbox.
If messages are classified as spam, and you click the Report not spam button, that helps signal to Gmail to stop the filtering for every Gmail account.
What we’re asking you to do
If you have time, what would be helpful is if you:
- Send an email to members-join@hthc.ca from your @gmail.com account
- this email can have a blank subject and body
- Let us know if you get an email titled Your confirmation is needed to join the members@hthc.ca mailing list and if it was in your inbox or your spam folder
- this should arrive within 5 minutes
- If the confirmation message went into your spam folder, click the Report not spam button at the top of the message
- Follow the instructions in the confirmation email, if you received it
- all you have to do is click reply and send the reply
- Let us know if you get an email titled Welcome to the “HTHC Members” mailing list and if it was in your inbox or your spam folder
- you won’t receive this one right away, we have to approve the request manually
- Again, if the welcome message went into your spam folder, click the Report not spam button at the top of the message
Send us an email to tell us how it went or if you ran into any problems.
Other details
If you have any interest in the technical details of what affected the old list and what changes we’re trying to make, let us know. We’re happy to share that.
Thank you!