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How to handle classmates wanting no contact

Forums: Questions and Answers About Building Your Site
Created on: 12/04/08 10:41 PM Views: 1916 Replies: 19
Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 10:41 PM

In our search for classmates we have found 10 (out of over 500 that we have found) who say that they want no further contact with us. I guess after 50 years they prefer to stay lost.

We have not put in any phone numbers but we have to put in a city and state so they will not show on the missing list and we don't fell it's right to put in a fake city and state.

Could we have a 'no contact' check box that would leave them on the class list but without the city and state showing?

We think that showing the city and state, we are not honoring their request for no contact because people might try to find them with that information.

In their last name field we put [PREFERS NO CONTACT].

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Edited 12/04/08 10:52 PM
Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 10:50 PM - Response #1

Why not change your Missing Classmate criteria to something else?

Or if you leave it how it is now, which is as follows:

Consider Missing Classmates to be all Classmates with no email address or street address entered in the system.

then you could always just enter your own email address in the email address field. This will remove the Classmate from your Missing Classmate list. Or in the street address field you could just type "Unlisted" or something like that. That would also work. There is no reason you need to be typing in a city and/or state.


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Edited 12/04/08 10:51 PM
Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 10:58 PM - Response #2

I could put a email address in but would that mean that we would get multiple emails?

I guess I could just put in nocontact@redford59.com and not have it forwarded to a real address.

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Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 11:25 PM - Response #3

OK another problem to solve. I chaged the profile to show no info, added a fake email address and took out the city and state.

But when you go into it, it says

If you are Robert L., please click here to update your profile!

That no good because we don't want people looking for him or for somebody to click on it and put something in there.

See this Jing http://screencast.com/t/SxkH4pg6Xz

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Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 11:29 PM - Response #4

Ken Kelsey wrote:

I could put a email address in but would that mean that we would get multiple emails?

I guess I could just put in nocontact@redford59.com and not have it forwarded to a real address.

The later would work, but if you put in your own email address, you're not going to actually get any email unless a Classmate tries to contact one of these Classmates. Which would be unlikely if you're adding the no contact verbiage.


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Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 11:31 PM - Response #5

Ken Kelsey wrote:

OK another problem to solve. I chaged the profile to show no info, added a fake email address and took out the city and state.

But when you go into it, it says

If you are Robert L., please click here to update your profile!

That no good because we don't want people looking for him or for somebody to click on it and put something in there.

See this Jing http://screencast.com/t/SxkH4pg6Xz

In that case, you'll need to actually join the site on behalf of this Classmate. That'll remove the join message, but the Classmate will have a gold star next to their name, possibly giving the false illustion they are participating in your site. That may be better than having the join message though. Short of this, I can only recommend you remove the Classmate's name from your site completely.


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Edited 12/04/08 11:39 PM
Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 11:43 PM - Response #6

Brad Switzer wrote:


In that case, you'll need to actually join the site on behalf of this Classmate. That'll remove the join message, but the Classmate will have a gold star next to their name, possibly giving the false illustion they are participating in your site. That may be better than having the join message though. Short of this, I can only recommend you remove the Classmate's name from your site completely.

I tried to log in for him and it said I had to be logged in to view his profile.

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Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 11:59 PM - Response #7

Alright... Whew!

I logged in and unchecked 'only classmates can see profile'

then checked out and went to his profile as him

entered only a fake email and re clicked 'only classmates can see profile'

Re logged as me

Now when I go into his profile it shows Send a private message to Robert L.

We don't want people thinking that they can send an email to him even if the email in not a good one.

See this Jing http://screencast.com/t/Q8j1twZZp0

A check box to exclude all info except the name and photo would sure be a lot easier and honors his request of no contact.

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Friday, December 5, 2008 at 12:58 AM - Response #8

This may be a dumb question, but why not remove the Classmate from the Class List? I realize you're probably wanting to have a complete Class List, but if somebody doesn't want to be found or participate, why list them? Just thinking out loud here... Even if we add a no contact option I can forsee somebody Googling their own name, finding your Class List in the search engine results, and contacting you and complaining anyway.

Give me your final thoughts on this issue, and then I'll devise a Task to resolve this situation in one fasion or another.


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Friday, December 5, 2008 at 1:10 AM - Response #9

I see that you're a night owl like me. Very Happy

Our committee has had long talks about this subject going back and forth on how to handle. It was decided that we had to at least show the name and photo but keep everything else blank. To not show the name would just have people asking why we missed them. And the last thing we need is to draw notice to them.

I thought that if we click only the classmates will see the profile, how will Google find it?

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Friday, December 5, 2008 at 8:02 AM - Response #10

Ken Kelsey wrote:

I see that you're a night owl like me. Very Happy

Our committee has had long talks about this subject going back and forth on how to handle. It was decided that we had to at least show the name and photo but keep everything else blank. To not show the name would just have people asking why we missed them. And the last thing we need is to draw notice to them.

I thought that if we click only the classmates will see the profile, how will Google find it?

A webcrawler will go visit each link on a website and record the contents that it finds there. So when it goes to your "Classmate Profile" page, it will visit the profile page of the no-contact classmate. Since there is a profile there that says his name (even if the "sorry you must be logged in", there is still a name in the TITLE BAR), then the name becomes searchable.

If there is a profile that is visible with no password then all of the contents become searchable. If the profile is password protected, then just what is visible when you click on the page without the password is searchable.

If the "Classmate Profile" page is password protected then the classmate would not be seachable. The bad thing about this would be that classmates couldn't join your site either.


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Edited 12/05/08 8:03 AM
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 9:58 AM - Response #11

Can you just delete them from the profiles and make a 'special' list on your homepage or at the top of reunion pages with a list of the 10 no-contacts? Our yearbooks always had a list of "camera shy" classmates for their explanation as to why there was no picture.
My other thought was to put them on the memory pages. Why would someone have to be deceased to be there? You can put a message there that they are 'remembered' and are currently loving life but expressed the wish to not be contacted/included.

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Friday, December 5, 2008 at 11:26 AM - Response #12

Brad... This has been very hard process to try to convince you that we just need to have a check box so that just the name and photo shows.

One last problem I found when going in and putting in a fake email address. The gold star shows up and their name shows up on the front page that they have updated their profile.

Our committee thinks it would be wrong not to show their name because they did graduate with us. But we do not want to draw any further or special attention to them by being on the In Memory list or being on a special list or having a gold star or showing in a listing on the front page that they have updated their profile.

I realize that this is not a problem for the younger classes (yet), but you have to realize that our classmates are all over 66 years old and subject to strange requests like "leave me alone". It's what happens to some people as they get older.

What do you think Brad?

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Friday, December 5, 2008 at 12:03 PM - Response #13

Ken Kelsey wrote:

I see that you're a night owl like me. Very Happy

Our committee has had long talks about this subject going back and forth on how to handle. It was decided that we had to at least show the name and photo but keep everything else blank. To not show the name would just have people asking why we missed them. And the last thing we need is to draw notice to them.

I thought that if we click only the classmates will see the profile, how will Google find it?

Google won't find the Profile, but rather will find your Class List page.


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Friday, December 5, 2008 at 12:19 PM - Response #14

Not tryin' to be difficult with ya Ken. But, Class Creator was made under the premise that Classmates might actually want to participate. I never anticipated a scenario where a Classmate who absolutely refuses to participate in the site must absolutely be added to the site anyway. For now how about make a Classmate called "NOT LISTED" and then in that Classmate's Profile list all of the Classmates who have indicated they do not wish to participate in your site?

My resistance to this issue stems from the fact that what you describe as a simple no contact checkbox opens up a can of worms far larger than you're imagining. This issue affects the Profile page, Classmate edit pages, several right hand home page modules (for instance do you not want these Classmates mapped?), the gold star functionality, the join mechanism, and more. Now throw in the fact that the programmers are currently focused on signifcant tasks, such as closing the hijacking loophole, and maybe you can understand my desire to help you find a workaround solution.

I will come up with a Task for this as previously indicated, but it won't make it live in the system for some time anyway. Until we have a "no contact Classamate" type of feature integrated system wide, please let me know if adding a Classmate name that then lists all non Participating Classmates is a reasonable temporary solution.


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Edited 12/05/08 12:37 PM
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 1:01 PM - Response #15

Whew! In trying to devise a Task for this, it became clear that this will create twice the mess that I indicated above. What I'll need you to do is NOT join the site on behalf of Classmates who refuse to particiapte after all. You'll need to delete any Classmates for whom you've already joined, and then re-add the Classmate names so they are back to a "pre joined" state.

Now, I think in the pre joined state we can simplify things a little bit. I added the following Task to the programmer's Task List. Please read it and tell me if you think this will solve your dilemma:


---------
On this page -- class_admin_members_form.cfm -- under the Grant Admin Access section, please add another checkbox that reads like this:

"Participation:
In most cases this option should be set to Yes.
Only set this to No if a Classmate does not wish to
particiapte in your site. This will leave your Classmate's
name on the Class List, but will remove the ability to
join the site or be contacted by other Classmates."


Make sure that ONLY the Site Administrator can see this new option. Classmates should NOT see this option at all when they're editing their own contact details page.

If this option is set to "No", the system needs to do the following:

* Remove the JOIN HERE box from the Classmate's Profile.
* Remove the "If you know where Classmate is" contact box on the Classmate's Profile.


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Edited 12/05/08 1:08 PM
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 1:42 PM - Response #16


Quote:

On this page -- class_admin_members_form.cfm -- under the Grant Admin Access section, please add another checkbox that reads like this:

"Participation:
In most cases this option should be set to Yes.
Only set this to No if a Classmate does not wish to
particiapte in your site. This will leave your Classmate's
name on the Class List, but will remove the ability to
join the site or be contacted by other Classmates."

Make sure that ONLY the Site Administrator can see this new option. Classmates should NOT see this option at all when they're editing their own contact details page.

If this option is set to "No", the system needs to do the following:

* Remove the JOIN HERE box from the Classmate's Profile.
* Remove the "If you know where Classmate is" contact box on the Classmate's Profile.

I think that this will do it Brad. Thank you, sorry to be such a pest, I know that you've got a lot of other issues to take care of.

I appreciate all that you have done with this site, it's fantastic and no comparison to any other site out there, free or paid. Our site is far and away better. I also appreciate that you are allowing us to use it at no charge. I trust that you will be rewarded in the long run.

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Friday, December 5, 2008 at 4:16 PM - Response #17

Already rewarding now. But, should it become even more rewarding someday, I'll happily accept that. Smile


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Saturday, February 28, 2009 at 5:05 PM - Response #18

What we'll do is add a "no emails" switch Admins can turn on for Classmates who want to join the site, but never be contacted by other Classmates. We're extremely busy with a hardware upgrade tomorrow and several other major things going into next week so I'm not sure how soon we can make this available, but I've added it to our Task List.


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Sunday, March 1, 2009 at 2:37 PM - Response #19

Hello all,

I recently started my school website and had this issue just this last week crop up. The twin of one of our classmates does not want to be contacted, but he did, at the urging of his twin, update his profile.

So, I just moved him to the Guest Member area. Now, I know when sending out emails not to contact him. And, his profile does not show up under Classmate Profiles.

I also put a note in his profile in that box designed for Administrator notes that he does not want to be contacted so that we will remember in the future that he is a classmate.

CindyV

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