How To Successfully Move an Online Discussion Group

A popular online discussion group I have supported for many years changed their delivery system at least four times in the last two years. The result has been a significant in member numbers and activity on the group, one that I'm not sure the group can ever recover from.

Which brings me to this topic: what to do when changing an online discussion group from one delivery format to another.

First off: think very, very carefully about whether or not moving the group is, truly, a good idea. You will see a significant drop in the number of subscribers after making this transition, and it will take much work to make sure the word gets out that your group is now hosted via a different format. Make sure this new format is going to truly be an improvement, that it is something you are going to stay with for a long period of time, and that you have the capacity to take action to counter the drop in membership numbers.

When transitioning to a new system, there are important steps to take to keep the list alive and growing:

• give the group information about the change to the new system one month before the change date, two weeks before the change date, one week before the change date and one day before the change date. Note exactly what day the last posts to the old group address will be accepted and what day the new system goes into affect.

• spell out exactly what features are staying and which ones are going away.

• detail exactly how people with specialized settings (they have been getting the digest version of the group, or they have been accessing the group via the web rather than e-mail) can maintain these settings.

• detail exactly how people can filter messages into one folder on Microsoft Outlook and Eudora, as well as any other major e-mail readers, particularly if you are no longer going to offer features like digest. Ask your members who filter their group messages now for directions on how they do it, so it can be shared with others.

• detail what will happen to the archives of discussions for the old system.

• the day the new group goes live, you should either re-post everything that was posted to the old group in the last one-two weeks, or, have pre-arranged with the original posters to resubmit these messages themselves.

• create a message that someone would receive via email upon trying to subscribe to or post to the old group to direct the person to the new group.

• post to every related/appropriate newsgroup and mailing list to announce the new group address.

• do a search on the web for the old list addresses on Google, then write the web masters for each page, asking them to change the address of the list.

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