E-mail addresses are an important data element – they become the User Name that a user must enter at login time, and are used for important communications, particularly between leaders and members.
New members
In the unlikely event that someone wishes to join the Club and does not wish to give the Club an email address, the System will let them enter a fake email address in their membership application form. As long as they type in some text that looks like an email address, the System will accept it. But the member will not receive any emails from the Club – they will not, for instance, receive renewal reminders, or any general announcements by the President. If a leader does not notice that the member’s email address is a fake address, the member may miss out on communications about a walk they have booked on.
In addition, we suspect that, when the system sends out emails to large groups e.g. to all members and guests, a high number of bounces caused by fake email addresses may prevent the email from being distributed correctly.
For these reasons, new members and guests should be strongly encouraged to have valid email addresses. A number of sites offer free email accounts.
Former members
During data migration to the new system in 2017, expired members for whom no email address was recorded on the database were each given a system-created email address in the format nnnn@canberrabushwalkingclub.org, where nnnn = the person’s User ID. Those expired members were generally members a long time ago.
If an expired member wishes to renew and has no recollection of providing the Club with an email address, they should contact the Membership Secretary or Web Manager, who will be able to tell them the email address that is now listed for them in the System. If they have an nnnn@… format email address, the Membership Secretary or Web Manager should ask the renewing member to consider getting a real email address, and to log in and change ‘nnnn@canberrabushwalkingclub.org’ to their new address.
