SuperRonin: a newsletter for the circulars index, and how we count opened bulletins

Two changes to the circulars index on superronin.com today. One is visible to everyone, the other mostly to us.

A newsletter form. The hub and every issuer page now end with a short form: an e-mail address, an optional field for the flag, class or P&I club you follow, and a box to tick if you agree to get news from SuperRonin and other marketing e-mails. The box is never ticked for you. After the form we send one e-mail with a confirmation link, and the address joins the list only when you open it. If you don't, it's deleted after 30 days. Every newsletter will carry an unsubscribe link that works without signing in.

The form answers the same way whether an address is new or already on the list, so nobody can use it to find out who has subscribed. We keep the exact wording you agreed to, with its date, because consent wording changes over time and the agreement should match what you saw. The privacy page has a new section about it.

On issuer pages the optional field comes pre-filled with that issuer's code. It tells us which flags and classes people care about before we decide which lists to add next.

Counting opened bulletins. Inside SuperRonin a new circular shows up in the bell, on the News page, on the vessel card and in the e-mail bulletin. Until now each link went straight to the issuer's PDF, so we had no idea whether anyone opened them. Now the link goes through superronin.com first: we note that a member of an organisation opened that circular and where they clicked it, then pass the browser on to the original document. Opening a circular also clears it from the bell.

Mail security scanners open every link in a message before a person does, so their visits are recognised and not counted. Postmark, which delivers our mail, still tracks nothing. The records are kept for 400 days and are visible only to us.

Why bother: a pilot user asked the right question. If nobody opens the circulars, the feature isn't worth growing, and we'd rather know that from numbers than from a guess. The certificate register stays free while the pilot runs.