Care To Join The List?
(Nov.-Dec., 2004)
At a recent meeting of the New Bern Newcomer’s Club, a fellow Tabernian at our table asked if anyone knew where she could rent or borrow baby furniture over the Thanksgiving holiday week to accommodate her daughter’s family visit. We talked about the ‘Loan Closet’ that was discussed in a recent issue of the Tribune. Then two ladies who live in River Bend spoke up. “What you need”, they said, “is an email list like we have in River Bend.”
An email list is a closed email distribution. You send an email to one address – in their case RBMail – and everyone who subscribes to the list gets the email. River Bend, Trent Woods, and Fairfield Harbor have their own email lists, and I believe the time has come for Taberna residents to establish their own list.
How would a Taberna email list work? Because email lists are closed membership subscriptions, a person would have to be a resident or property owner in Taberna to be allowed access. People would have to request to subscribe to the list, and agree to abide by its gudelines. The addresses in an email list would reside on a server at a local ISP who would agree to host the list. The email list would be secure, and would never be provided to any third party beyond the host ISP. As a list subscriber, your own email address remains hidden unless you post to the group. When answering posts, you have the option of answering only the person posting the question, or responding to the group at large if the response is of general interest.
If you subscribe, would this mean you would get more email each day? Absolutely! How much? Time will tell. Based on feedback from the other three local community list administrators, the volume will vary greatly, but expect between 5 and 20 per day. That depends of course on how many people choose to participate. Trent Woods has about 140 subscribers, Fairfield Harbor about 250, and River Bend over 350. Sometimes things are quiet, and sometimes someone pushes a hot button, or a local event kicks off a lot of activity.
What sort of things get posted on email lists? You’ll see anything and everything, since it’s a forum for free exchange, but the most common posts are for-sale items, yard sales, requests for advice, items or services wanted, and community activities. List subscribers who are also board members of the HOA could use the list to get out news of community interest, but the list would not be moderated or controlled by the HOA.
Surprisingly, the administrators in the other local communities said they had not had much in the way of controversial subjects, and none had been forced to bar anyone for blatant violation of guidelines. The lists tend to be self-policing. After all, these are your neighbors posting, and if someone gets out of line, folks aren’t shy about telling them they’re out of line. “You get to learn who the curmudgeons are” said one of the Newcomers from River Bend, “and you just delete their posts without opening them.”
List postings would be unmoderated, meaning no one censors them. As to group guidelines, the plan is to solicit a few folks to help establish list rules, keeping them few and simple. People who show blatant disregard for the guidelines will be removed from the list. Generally, the rules that apply to conversation in polite company would apply as well to the email list. Politics, sex, and religion, all things people have strong opinions about, would be better discussed in different forums than an email list. Off-color language and commercial advertising would be prohibited.
If you agree that an email list would be an asset to the Taberna community and would like to become a subscriber, send an email to wamaruna@cox.net and I will get back to you with the specifics as we set this up.