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Membership | How to join | Membership settings | Posting messages | Message delivery options
Group moderation | Polls | Nonmembers with news
Member? Nonmember interested in joining? Former member? Or just too much time on your hands? This is the place to be for everything you never wanted to know about the AMWA Southwest Yahoo! Group.
Membership
Membership is open to all members of AMWA Southwest (yes, you must be a member of the chapter). All you need is an e-mail address and a thirst for knowledge. (A computer would be handy, too.)
How to join
The Membership Chairman will send an invitation to all new chapter members, to their e-mail address of record. If you are not a new member but wish to join (or just haven't been invited), please visit the group's homepage and submit a request to join. Group messages can be sent to any e-mail address you wish.
Membership settings
- Yahoo! Profile: The Yahoo! ID you are a member under.
- E-mail address: The e-mail address that will be used to deliver notices of new posts.
- Message delivery: See below for details on this.
- Message format: No html or html? When in doubt, choose "no html."
If you wish to change the e-mail address that messages are sent to or wish to unsubscribe completely, please visit our homepage to make the change or e-mail amwasouthwest-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. The moderator cannot (as far as she's been able to figure out) change the e-mail address you are subscribed under without deleting you from the group and sending you an invitation to your new e-mail address. If you just want to change your e-mail address, please first try to do it through the group site.
Posting messages
All members of the group can post to the group. Moderators, however, are the only ones who can send Special Notices. If you have something to post that you believe should be sent as a Special Notice, please contact the moderator. Otherwise, you may send the message yourself.
Please try not to make the message too long, and DO NOT use html formatting or text links!
What is acceptable:
- Questions about publishing, editing, or writing
- Resources or relevant news (e.g., new guidelines)
- Discussions of chapter business
- Job postings (jobs in the chapter area or freelance opportunities)
- Announcements about upcoming meetings or events of interest
Obviously, all messages should be polite and substantive.
DO NOT post ads for jobs outside of the chapter area (unless, perhaps, it is a freelance task that can be done from a distance) or ads from headhunters. They will be deleted.
Message delivery options
This is important!
- Individual e-mails: Receive individual messages.
- Daily digest: Receive a daily compilation of many e-mails in one message.
- Special notices: Receive only important e-mail notices from the group moderator.
- No e-mail: Read messages on the website.
If you select "Individual e-mails," you will get every message posted to the group. Most of the time, this will not be troublesome. But when people start chatting away, all those new e-mails in your box may annoy you. "Special notices" means you'll only receive e-mail notifications of vital chapter business (meeting announcements, meeting reminders, and newsletter announcements). If you select "No e-mail," you'll receive no e-mails, but you won't know if someone's posted to the group unless you check the site.
Often, when the group has a lot of "chatter," one or two people unsubscribe (or ask to be unsubscribed) from the list because of it. Please do not leave the list completely simply because there's too much chatter--it's flat unnecessary.
Group moderation
The group is moderated, meaning a moderator checks each new message and chooses to either approve it or delete it. This protects group members from receiving "out of office" e-mails, messages with no substantive content (e.g, "Thanks!"), and messages intended for only one member (i.e., when someone clicks Reply but only means to send the reply to the post's author, not everyone in the chapter). The moderator may also delete posts that she considers inappropriate or rude.
There will be lag time between the time you post to the group and the time your post appears. It could be minutes, hours, or even days, depending on the circumstances. There is a back-up moderator, however, to serve in the event that the regular moderator is unable to fulfill his or her duties.
The moderator reserves the right to proofread all posted messages, making corrections as needed. He or she will sometimes also add "DO NOT REPLY TO THIS E-MAIL" tags to messages before approving them. A "Do not reply" tag is included by default, of course, but the moderator has found that those extra ALL-CAPS reminders really help to drive the point home.
Polls
A number of people have asked about poll creation on the Yahoo! group.
Only one question may be asked at a time in a poll. Only moderators are allowed to post polls, and we are given only two options--send results to the entire group or send results to the creator. As I doubt most people would want the results of their poll question sent to the entire membership list on the close date, the results are usually set to come to the creator (aka moderator), who can then pass the information on to the person who asked the poll question. (It's an inefficient system, but it's the only one we've got.)
To anyone who is able to post a poll (i.e., has moderator power): Be advised that poll questions are not submitted for moderator approval before being sent. Do not submit "test" questions.
Nonmembers with news
If you are not a member but have something you'd like posted to the group (usually a job listing, freelance opportunity, or a meeting announcement for a similar organization), please e-mail the moderator, Lori Buffum.
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