Member services has seen a significant increase in the overall number of duplicates in the past 6-12 months. This has meant there have been a significant increase in login troubles for members, an increase in login-related inquiries. Member services has also been unable to keep up with the constantly growing number of duplicate accounts. Since December 2020, we have seen approximately 3000 duplicate pairs emerge - that's approximately 1000 pairs or 500 duplicated accounts per month.

We believe there are a few things that could be done to reduce the number of duplicates overall.
1. Prevent/block folks from adding more than one duplicate account per day
2. Prevent/block folks from adding more than one duplicate account ever, not including checkout as guest/donate as guest
3. For 'checkout as guest' and 'donate as guest', we might want to add a warning message about a potential duplicate, asking folks to login then complete their transaction

Screenshots attached for the following: I have also noticed that when not logged into the website, if I go to create another account for myself using the same first name, last name, email, and username, it only warns me that the username is already in use, rather than indicating there may be a duplicate account. I also received a popup that said, 'The Mountaineers says 'there has been an error' - but it didn't indicate anything in the popup about there being a potential duplicate, and the popup can be dismissed. It seems to me that there needs to be a direct warning indicating a duplicate account rather than just indicating the username is taken - otherwise someone will just use a different username and create another duplicate. But if I misunderstand something or if there is a feature that I didn't get to trigger, I may be wrong about the duplicate protections on the 'join' page.

Jeff is right that we shouldn't completely block folks from creating a new account, however right now it seems like there are very few barriers to doing so and very few prompts that a person is even creating a duplicate. A more robust design that makes it harder for folks to make a duplicate account would mean a minimum of approximately 20 hours less work potentially every 3 months (minimum of .75 minutes per merge, 1500 merges = 18.75 hours of work per 3 months). Please let me know if you have any more questions!

We've received a number of calls lately from folks who have a family membership. They go to add an adult family member, but get stuck when they are required to select whether 'I will manage the account for the youth' or 'the youth will manage their own profile, but I will sign their waiver and manage their account.' It is confusing that they have to choose one of these options when they are not adding a youth family member to their account.

I think changing the language to something like these two options would suffice to reduce confusion:
-This is a youth family member and I will manage their account.
-The adult or youth will manage their own profile. If it is a youth family member, I will sign their waiver and oversee their account.

Here is a screenshot of that Jeff created pointing out the field that should be changed:

I often hear this feedback but I don't think I've done a great job documenting it, so here goes.
Today I spoke with 50 year member Diana Edgar and I thanked her and let her know her of recent lifetime membership.

While we were speaking she shared how much she loved being a Mountaineer but she has felt so cut off lately because she doesn't know how she can participate when everything is online and she doesn't use email or a computer. She deeply wishes there was a way for her to sign up for activities that was easy for internet free person.
I let her know that I'd document her feedback, that she was not alone in her woes, though it was true we had shifted to be primarily online.
While I know there is nothing that can really be done right now, I thought it would be good If I started sharing the times I heard so there could be some sort of record in case we ever decided to offer some sort of hotline for seniors?

Couple ideas from Jeff Bowman: Maybe a phone line staffed by volunteers who want to help out. Could be a Mountaineers phone number that is forwarded or VM only. It could be like or Trip Emergency Line.

It would be useful to have satellite communicator addresses on the roster along with contact information. This could be voluntarily entered on the member page, not publicly visible, just of use by the roster, similar to the emergency contact.

The reasoning: Unless replying to a message, a person's Garmin InReach can only be contacted directly using this InReach address. However, these are seldom shared among party members. The ability to directly contact a party member via satellite is a powerful tool in an emergency. Separated party members could communicate with each other. Overdue parties might be contacted. Additional contact would be available in an emergency callout.

Two-way satellite communicators, other than Garmin's, should have a contact address that looks like a phone number or email address.

This is similar to:
http://feedback.mountaineers.org/forums/273688-general-feedback/suggestions/33887968-promo-codes-dollar-amount-discount-for-entire-s

However, I would suggest instead of promo codes that we simply maintain a "store credit" for each member, kind of like how on Amazon you have a gift card balance. You could use the balance as payment for anything on the Mountaineers website like books, courses, donations, etc.

You could use it for things like volunteer recognition (eGift-cards) but, more importantly, we could use it to have a unified, consistent policy toward late course cancellations.

Prior to the course registration closing date, students could cancel for a full refund less the cancellation fee (the current policy). However, for those who cancel after the course has finished, our "default" solution, rather than throw it to the committee or course lead (who I guarantee want no involvement in adjudicating any "case-by-case basis") would be to credit the cost of the course fee to the member's gift-card balance.

In this way, the member would be able to use the amount toward a future offering of the course, or any other course, or any merchandise, without the club losing any money because the gift-card balance would not be redeemable to cash (which is, I believe, pretty standard practice).

In our branch, our policy tends to be, if you cancel after the course starts, you get no refund but you can take the course the next year at no additional charge. This creates admin burden for the course leads (especially if there's turnover) and harms the club because it would stand to make more if the student paid the current year's course fee (which is usually higher).

I would argue that this approach is:

1) ideal for volunteers since it will largely insulate them from these kinds of frustrating requests and means they don't have to track down old emails and old roster notes to adjudicate requests.

2) ideal for the club because it decreases revenue lost and increases future revenue by making students pay the future year course fee

3) fair to students since it ensures they never "lose" their fee and gives them more options for applying their course fee (which is also great if someone takes scrambling and realizes halfway through it's not for them!)

Allow PDF (and other browser viewable files) to be viewed in the browser.

The Seattle Sea Kayaking Committee is storing minutes as PDF documents. When you click on the file name (blue) what happens depends on the browser you are using. Some browsers (Firefox) allows the user to choose to download or view in a browser window. Other browsers (Safari and Chrome on Mac) always download the file.

If I just want to view the file, having it downloaded to my computer is inconvenient. Now I must navigate to the downloaded file, open it, and later decide if I want to keep it. This inconvenience is multiplied when I search through past minutes for when a topic has been discussed. Every document that matches must be downloaded and then opened.

It would be far more convenient if I could just open the PDF in a browser window. From there I can later decide if I wish to save the document to my computer. This functionality should be applied to all browser viewable formats. Images are the other category that come to mind.

For Course rosters people can be associated with one of a hard-coded list of roles and can be advertised as a public contact for the course in that role. We are proposing that the list of roles be extended to better support current common practices. Specifically, we propose adding the following roles:

Co-leader
Assistant Leader
Content Manager

The Co-leader and Assistant Leader roles are self explanatory. Larger courses may want to show multiple leaders as public contacts but still be able to identify a single person as the primary leader.

The Content Manager is the person who manages registration and other data for the course. This role has been common in the Mountaineers for years, but the website currently associates it with the committee roster instead of a course roster. Adding this role at the course level will allow the Content Manager to be listed as a public contact for the course (which is where most students will look), and will allow programs that offer multiple courses to have different Content Managers for different courses if they choose. (Note that due to COVID-19 some programs are offering multiple instances of the same course - the "cohort model" - to keep group sizes small, so the number of programs that offer multiple courses is increasing.)

For Committee rosters people can be associated with one of a hard-coded list of positions and can be advertised as a public committee contact in that position. The way Mountaineers Committees are typically administered has changed over the last few years. We are proposing that the list of positions be extended to better support current common practices.

We propose adding the following positions:

Safety
Vice Chair
Chair Elect
Chair Emeritus

"Safety" is meant to indicate the Safety Officer. Most Committees are now basing their Committee Charter on the Clubwide charter template, which specifies that the committee have a Safety Officer. Adding such a position allows the committee's safety officer to be publicly visible on the committee page, and could set the stage for automatically sending safety reports to that person in the future. We think the term "Officer" is weird, and propose just calling the role "Safety", similar to how the Leadership Chair role is just called "Leadership".

The standard committee charter template also specifies that committees have a Vice Chair, hence the addition of that position too.

The Chair Elect and Chair Emeritus positions are becoming more common as committee succession plans become more mature and more committees adopt the three-person Chair Elect/Chair/Chair Emeritus leadership model.