impact of Gmail's "promotions" tab on free software communities

[Cornelia S.]

I can recommend Protonmail, it works very well with linux!

​Regards,
Cornelia



-------- Original Message --------
 On January 25, 2018 10:09 AM, Daniel Pocock <daniel at pocock.pro> wrote:

>
> There was a discussion in one community recently about essential emails
> not reaching new contributors because they get stuck in the Gmail
> "promotions" tab.
>
> This is quite concerning, for example, when Debian sends out the yearly
> announcement for DebConf travel grants / bursaries, if only the regular
> participants receive that email it undermines renewal and diversity in
> the organization.
>
> It is even worse if sending people an email that their talk proposal or
> travel grant is accepted and they don't see that email.
>
> I have a few questions about this:
>
> - are other communities who operate mailing lists or send announcements
> noticing a similar problem, for example, announcements not reaching
> people or lower participation in email discussions?
>
>
> - are people noticing it in their capacity as Gmail users / recipients
> of email?
>
>
> - are people consciously talking about the problem in other communities?
>
>
> - given the high percentage of people using Gmail, would it be
> reasonable to take countermeasures, for example, when somebody registers
> for an event, refusing to let them use a gmail address and giving them a
> link to a page with more details about the problem?
>
>
> - is there any particularly good web page we can point people to
> explaining the Gmail problem and giving them a concise list of
> alternatives so they can migrate quickly?
>
> Regards,
>
> Daniel
>
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