Modify Membership Request Emails To Include More Information About Users

[thelittlevoice]

Title
Modify Membership Request Emails To Include More Information About Users

Short, concise description of the idea
Modify the membership request e-mails to include more information about users. This will make it possible to tend to requests from e-mail, rather than the "Pending Membership Requests" page.

Full description of the idea
This suggestion stems from two earlier suggestions: " User Profile in Membership Request Emails" and " Modify 'Pending Membership Requests' Page...".

As most community maintainers who tend to membership requests know, this can be a tedious job. With the current membership request e-mails, there is not enough information about users to make an approve / reject decision. The same goes for the "Pending Membership Requests" page which not only does not have a lot of information about users, maintainers have to view profiles one-by-one if they want to learn more and go back-and-forth to approve / reject.

Based on the above, I would like to put forth another suggestion in an attempt to make tending the membership requests easier. This is based off of the current Twitter e-mail update, which is sent anytime users have a new friend / follower. Below is an example of such update, which includes basic information about users such as friends / followers and updates / tweets.




Integrating LiveJournal information along with the Twitter template above, I suggest the membership request e-mails could look like the following:




As you can see in the above mock-up, the e-mail would give basic, more useful information about users. Often times journal creation dates, comment statistics, number of friends, and age determine whether someone will be approved or not. The information is basic and condensed and should not be of concern for those concerned with privacy. It only draws from information that is elected to be displayed in the profile. (For example, if someone has chosen the option to not display their birth date in their profile, then it would show up as blank or "-" in the membership request e-mail.)
An ordered list of benefits

• Membership requests will actually have enough useful information that maintainers can make decisions from their in-box, as opposed to visiting the membership request page (which is not exactly user-friendly).
• With the revised e-mail template, maintainers can even tend to membership requests from their mobile device.
• Convenient / quicker than having to visit each individual profile to find information.
• Especially beneficial for communities with high traffic / number of requests.
• This template could be applied for regular friend requests on LiveJournal--dual use.

An ordered list of problems/issues involved

• Privacy concerns - but as noted in the suggestion, it only draws from information that is elected to be displayed in the profile and it is kept basic. For example, if someone has chosen the option to not display their birth date in their profile, then it would show up as blank or "-" in the membership request e-mail.
• Time and programming for the e-mail / compiling the statistics for the e-mail.
• Concern that e-mails might be forwarded to / accessed by other people.
• Need to consider those who do not get HTML e-mails / messages.
• Would only be used by maintainers who receive e-mail updates. Am unsure as to the number of maintainers who use this for their communities.