Where's The Mail???

[Patrick Chappelle]

I just tried to sign up for NHacks and I have yet to receive the email confirmation link. I also am not getting notifications of responses to discussions I'm subscribed to here on Creators. Bernard commented on JFarrow's discussion, yet I received no email notification. Immediately after, J responded and I received an email notification.

What gives?

[Patrick Chappelle]

=)

[Eric Suesz]

Good point, Robert. The nature of this email notification issue is a bit tricky. It isn't happening for every network, but those who it has affected are understandably frustrated; identifying each network or person who it specifically is happening to so we can send them a dedicated email update would take additional time, which would delay the fix. And, of course, an email notification won't reach the majority of people since some people unsubscribe over time.

I will completely admit that this one is a frustrating fix for NCs and not at all ideal. I understand the anger some people have expressed because it isn't something that you can control. I'm hopeful the delayed email can be pushed through the "stopped up drain" (as Patrick wisely put it) and we can all move forward. Perhaps it would have been better to have let delayed emails expire and stay lost in the ether since the out-of-sync nature of these delayed emails is causing so much confusion. 

:(

[Robert Druse]

Thanks Eric!

[Jeff Bean]

Yes, I've got delayed mail on my two networks, too.

[Judson Phillips]

This is getting ridiculous.  First we had four days with no email. Now for the last day or so, my users have been bombarded with emails from days past.  I have had a number of complaints and even a couple of users have left over it.  At least those are the one's I know about.  I just tried to share something a few minutes ago and now it looks like notifications are not working again.

My frustration level is pretty well pegged.  Is this problem every going to be fixed?

[Eric Suesz]

I think this issue is fixed now, Judson. You should be able to share things. I just tried it on my test network, and it seems to work okay. I know this is a huge frustration for you. Hoping we can set it right by weekend's end (by then, I am pretty confident you won't be seeing those delayed emails anymore because they will have run their course).

[Eric Suesz]

Hi, blacatt. I'm sorry if it seems that we aren't taking this issue seriously. We have been working hard to fix this all week, and we have people working on this issue still (although the issue has been resolved; we are checking into reports of duplicates now). I think that everything that we have announced has been true, but there is a frustration that NCs are expressing that is absolutely understandable that comes with the feeling you get when you're receiving messages from past days out of sync. It's confusing and feels uncontrollable.  I am experiencing something similar, and I know it is a big-time annoyance. 

We have people checking out reports of duplicates, and if you have duplicate emails, I would love it if you could forward those to our support team. That would be a huge help. Of course, if it is too much trouble, I absolutely understand if you aren't able to do that. 

I'm sorry we've disappointed you. I hope we can win back your enthusiasm once we have this notification issue run its course. 

[Melon]

I'm also still having problems on my network, including duplicates getting delivered and the back log delivery still occuring

[Debby de Wilde]

Eric, you say the issue is solved, but I am still getting 'old' e-mail notifications. Or isn't that the issue that is solved? ;)

[Debby de Wilde]

Never mind; I just saw this e-mail from the help desk, that explains why I am still getting late notifications. Thanks for solving this! 

On Friday, our engineering team resolved an issue that was affecting broadcast emails and email notifications on the Ning Platform. One of our servers was not sending messages properly, and these messages have now been queued for delivery. It may take a few days before these messages are finally delivered, but new messages should not be affected by this issue. Some duplication of messages may also occur as our servers get everything up-to-date.

[Aaron]

Hi blaccatt,

I understand your frustration—for what it's worth, we're frustrated about this issue as well. Yesterday, I mentioned how I was premature in proclaiming the issue "resolved." While the problem itself was indeed fixed, its aftermath, as you mentioned, is taking longer than we'd all like.

We've been posting to the Ning Status Blog regularly with updates to this issue, and you'll find some of the technical information you requested there. In general, the Ning Status Blog is your best source for information on the Ning Platform's health, and our on-call team updates it regularly instead of sending messages to all Network Creators about bugs, issues, or outages. In fact, it's the first thing we update whenever something goes wrong (a server goes down, Ning.com becomes unavailable, slowness or errors on networks, etc.). We don't normally send email to all Network Creators about outages or issues. If you'd like one-on-one support or more information via email, our team is happy to answer any questions you have via a support ticket.

In terms of what you can do to deal with this issue, your best bet is to give us a heads up here on Creators or via a support ticket if you're still seeing duplicates or delayed messages after this weekend. As I mentioned yesterday, it's expected (though undesirable) that it will take a few days for everything to get back to normal after an outage of this nature.

[Eric Suesz]

I just want to echo what Aaron says. He probably says it better than I can. We really don't take issues like this lightly. We've been blessed with over 99.999% uptime in the past year, so we're doing much better over time in general than we ever have, but we still sometimes have issues that aren't related to up-time like this one. When they happen, we do our best to relay information on Creators, but the Status Blog is the official place to look. As is the direct one-on-one support you get through email and by phone. The Creators Network isn't designed to be our main support mechanism, but we try to share as much info as we can here because we have always had a very vibrant customer community. The community looks here, and we do our best to respond as quickly as possible. 

I suppose we could shift our resources away from the Creators Network and send out regular emails (e.g., when support outages happen), although to be honest the typical email delivery rate for anything and everything in the world that comes from a company and not a real person is woefully low. We are blessed to have a much higher rate of email reads and opens than anything I've ever seen (again, our customers pay attention!). But it still would not reach nearly as many people as updates on our status blog and here on Creators reach. And, to be frank, I'm not sure that an official email response would be as candid and open as we can be in online conversation. (It also wouldn't give people the opportunity to respond publicly, as you are now.)

We're honestly open to hearing what people think about how best to deploy our support resources. Should we spend less time with the Creators Network and more time reporting on the platform in-depth via email communications that track all of the details of the platform as they happen? Would you prefer a more formal way than we do it here on Creators? More formal email notification that are on point and official instead of updates here? If we're making the wrong choices about how best to communicate, we're open to making it better — even if that means participating less here on Creators and more directly with NCs via email. Let us know.