LearnHub

As long as the course if free, I dont think so, inviting friends then just means you are interested in showing them what you do on Learnhub. That is definitely fine with me.

Invitation for a payed course may be another case. Here I would prefer a private message in which you tell me the reasons you think this course should interest me. Only getting the formal note that I am invited to buy something, to me has a flavour of unwanted advertising.

I totally agree with you. However, some people seem to view emails asking them to join as a nuisance. Perhaps it’s a personal issue with not being open to strangers. I like sharing because I care about people, not because I want to gain anything from them. We all differ in how we react. Perhaps some are more weary and suspicious of strangers’ motives even when the exchange is free.

Well, I think it depends. I’ve been guilty of inviting a ton of people to one of my courses, but I think I was wrong to do that. While It’s free and informational, both positive, I still think that’s outweighed by the nuisance of it. I’ve decided my policy is going to be only to invite people I know or have talked to personally that I KNOW would be interested in the particular class I’m offering them. I think broadcasting an informational e-mail about the course isn’t particularly useful. I’m not sure I would put information e-mailing under the “because I care about people” category. If you know it pertains to their interests, then yes, but if not, then I don’t think e-mail a stranger about a course you’re not sure they care about proves anything about caring for people.

However, it’s not easy to search for courses in right now. So it is more permissible now than I think it will be in the future. Personally, I view the LearnHub feed to see what I’ve missed and if any new courses have been created that sound interesting, I’ll go check them out myself.

Does that answer your inquiry? Or is that not what you were trying to ask?

Thank you, Rachel. I also think it’s sometimes a nuisance to delete the numerous messages I get from facebook, learnhub, and other online environments to join various groups and courses. We should be sensitive to others’ wishes. However, we need to know what they are. I think it may be a good idea to have a feature that allows members to be able to add their preferences so that no one feels he or she has been spanned. I believe this and other issues should be discussed in public instead of in private conversations as such issues may help everyone. If I have offended anyone in the process, I apologize.

Please feel free to keep adding issues that you would like to discuss. Keeping things to ourselves does not help others.

Have a great week. Nellie

I think having a wat to set preferences is the perfect solution. I hadn’t even thought of that. I wonder if someone from LearnHub can tell us if they’re planning on adding that feature.

You don’t need a preference to block invites. You just need to not spam people in the first place.

I agree with Andrew and I also agree with Rachel. However, the bottom line is: We should be more sensitive to others’ who view innocent invitations as spamming. In addition, in order to avoid misunderstandings, it may be wise to have a preference feature since people are not the same (nor should they be). I would like to know who wants to receive an invitation and who does not. I would benefit from having such a list.

Who else would like such a list?

At the moment we have some room for improvement concerning the display of courses at learnhub. There is the marketplace, but I believe that the courses should build the heart of the more content-driven communities and should therefore have a prominent display on the community homepage. The team of learnhub is actually working on that already.

That said, when I agreed to inviting friends to courses of mine, I meant exactly that: sending singlehanded emails to friends I think would be interested in knowing about these courses.

I strongly believe we should restrain ourselves from sending mass-emails of any kind on learnhub! With the feeds set into action there is a powerful tool to stay informed about any activity of any user or community I showed some interest in by subscribing to their particular feed – and to “just have a look around” I can use the marketplace.

Then again: Don’t take spam to serious, as you know:

This applies to spam, as to taxes and death –
there is just no way around it.

Peter, Thanks so much for posting a link to your video lesson here. I really enjoyed it.

Regarding SPAM, you are right that it is unavoidable. It is also true that there are two grades of spam and this type of Spam is the less annoying.

Grade One: Commercial. Includes advertisements for medications with photos, conferences, invitations to view web cams, services, etc etc.

Grade Two: Personal. Sent by people you “know” who have no internet social skills (netiquette as you so aptly called it earlier). It comes in the way of forwards with various pictures, jokes, etc in them. It also comes in invitations to various things they should know I don’t care about. Some people when asked will stop passing these things along, but others will mindlessly continue to include you. I find this to be annoying mostly because it highlights the fact that they either don’t know who I am or they don’t care. If they did they wouldn’t have sent it.

I understand Andrew’s point that you shouldn’t have to ask people not to send you things they just shouldn’t if they don’t know you and know you aren’t interested. That is definitely my policy.

So maybe you have to “opt in” to get informational e-mails. The default should be guided by netiquette. Don’t send invites to people you don’t know AND know would be interested in the particular topic/item. You can have an option to say “I love learning about everything and nothing that links to an educational resource could ever be considered Spam. Opt me in.”

Thoughts?

Rachel,

I like this idea: You can have an option to say “I love learning about everything and nothing that links to an educational resource could ever be considered Spam. Opt me in.”

You may wish to pass it on to the developers of learnhub.