There's another new feature: We are going to send emails every month or two to inactive members asking if they wish to return and post some messages. The first time we did this, we found that dozens of you have not updated your email address in your member profile. To bring it up to date, please click Settings on the top navigation bar and correct your address. In the future, if we don't have a current address, we'll move your forum membership to the Inactive usergroup, meaning you won't be able to post. Yes, we respect your privacy, but we need a current email. Thanks for your cooperation.
You send us a current email address and we move you back to Active status. As to opting out, this works easily with our newsletters. There is an Unsubscribe link that processes the opt-out requests automatically. Our inactive reminder is basically a forum add-on that checks a member's activity — or lack thereof — and sends out messages to those who haven't posted since joining, or within the previous 30 days (after the initial mailing we did this morning). The reminders are set to be sent every 30 days thereafter, consisting of just a few short friendly paragraphs. I agree it would be nice to have some sort of opt-out system, and I've asked the programmer to see how it might be implemented. Thanks for the suggestion.
I want to update our forum membership policy: The programmer of our forum reminder message system has set up an opt-out link at the bottom of the message. If you don't want to receive any reminders, click that link. We have no way to access the database directly, though, so this is the only way it can work. To protect our members from spammers, we expect you to give us a real email address when you join the forums. You must respond to a message sent to that address to Activate your membership. If you don't, you're not a member and cannot participate in the forums. Whenever we receive a notice from our email server indicating someone's email address is no longer valid, that member's status is changed to Unregistered. What this means is that you can read the forums but not participate. You'll have to contact us directly (via PM) to give us your correct address so you can be restored to Registered status.
