Trail Mail at Yahoo! Groups

What—How—Where???
For members only. Click here to join us!

By Karen Bragg

What Is It?

Electronic mail (e-mail) has become an important communication tool for many of our members. It has enabled us to "talk" to each other no matter what chapter area we live in, and share information on trail conditions, ride and work party plans and political developments of interest to horsemen. Collecting and maintaining a list of email addresses of OET members once was the responsibility of each individual member who wanted to participate in email discussions. The creation of a “List Serve” greatly simplified the process.

OET moved into the electronic age several years ago with a basic e-mail "server" and a public web site. This was before "dot.com" became a common phrase in most vocabularies as it is today. An email server is simply a computer host that maintains an email address list. Anyone on that list can send one email to this server who then broadcasts it to the entire list. A list manager sees to it that the list is up to date, accurate and comprised of people who want to be on it. There are thousands of lists available to subscribers for just about any subject you can imagine. They are now generally hosted by large Internet companies that also provide web site space along with the list services. These companies support this service by advertising dollars on their web site pages as well as in footnotes to the emails it broadcasts for the list owners. In May of 2000 OET moved it’s own list to such a company, "Yahoo Groups", to avail itself of the additional features offered by this company. Only members of OET can subscribe to this list, and only members of the list have access to the web site pages set aside for OET’s use.

How Do You Do It?

Any member of OET with email access can subscribe to the Trail Mail list by simply sending an email to oet-trailmail-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.. This request should be made from the email address you wish to use to receive and send mail to this list. This should also be the email address listed on your membership form. The list manager, currently Karen Bragg, will cross-check your request with the current membership list and if the email address matches up, you will be approved. It is as simple as that. Once you have been approved, you will start to receive email from the list. You may also send email to the list by sending your message to oet­trailmail@yahoogroups.com.

As Trail Mail is a community of OET members, it is important to use this list respectfully and responsibly. Its primary purpose is to encourage communication and share information. However, we do want to limit this scope to subjects that are of interest to OET members. Try to keep a few points in mind when you contribute to this list:

• No Attachments—Do not include any attached files with your posts. These will not be sent along. Files and photos can be uploaded to the Yahoo Groups web site as is discussed below.
• No "forwarded" messages—Do not pass along any emails, regardless of the topic, that have already been "forwarded to everyone you know". This often creates duplicate copies in may mail boxes!
• No "personal" conversations—Remember that when you hit “Reply” to answer a message, you are replying to the entire list, not just the author of the message. You must address a new message to the author to send a private reply. Many discussions are quite suitable for the group, but when it gets down to "what time should I pick you up" sorts of things, that should go to private email.
• No "Flaming"—In Internet jargon this simply means keep it civil. Disagreements are to be expected in any lively exchange of ideas. All list members are expected to be respectful of others at all times. E-mail is very impersonal and is easily miss construed. Members are encouraged to be careful of their wording and even re-read their messages before hitting that "send" button, but it is also important to develop a bit of a thick skin and give the benefit of the doubt to the author whenever possible.

Where Do You Find It?

Yahoo Groups (groups.yahoo.com) offers us a great deal more than just an email server. The web site itself provides our members with many valuable features. However, you must register at the site to have access to these features.

After you have subscribed to Trail Mail, point your Internet browser to http://groups.yahoo.com. You will arrive at the Welcome page. As a new member, you will need to register there with your own email address and password. Follow the instructions on the site to register. Enter your e-mail address, and make up your own password. Write it down for future reference! Check the "Remember Me" button if you want to avoid having to type this information the next time you visit. Finally, click on the “Sign In” button.” Your request will be processed by Yahoo Groups and you will receive an email notice from them. Visit the site again, follow the directions on the email from Yahoo Groups, and you will be registered. If your browser is set to "Accept Cookies" you will not have to reenter your password each time you visit - however, the site will be looking for the "cookie" when you return, so you may want to keep your password handy in case you access the site from a different computer. Once registered, go to "My Groups" each time you visit and you will see the list of groups you subscribe to. Click on "oet-trail mail" and you will arrive at our private, member’s only, space on the server.

You will also find a selection box marked "My Preferences". This is where you customize your subscription information. Any information you put here about yourself will be available to other list members, such as address and phone number.

Within the OET group pages you will find a button to "Edit My Membership". You may customize how your trail mail messages are delivered, such as selecting to read your list mail "on the web" rather than by direct email, or electing to receive messages in a 'digest' form where you will get all messages posted in a 24-hour period in one, easy to scan email. Both of these selections are handy when you don’t want to fill your mailbox while you are gone on vacation or if you read your email from a computer at work. You can change this setting whenever you wish. If your email address changes, this too, is the place to make that change.

The OET main page lists the important addresses for subscribing, unsubscribing and posting to the list. It also shows the number of posts the list has had by month. You won't be able to access any of the links until you have signed in to the website. Then you can click on any link, and you will be taken to that area of our site.

The left hand column of the first page lists the features of the site:

• MESSAGES—All of the postings by Thread
• POST—You may post a message to the list from the site
• MEMBERS—Provides a list of Trail Mail Members. Click on a name and you may see a profile of that member if one has been provided. You may also email that member privately from the site.
• FILES—Here you will find downloadable files of interest to OET members. This includes Rider’s Roundups, Quarterly Board Meeting Minutes, Photos and other items that may be of timely interest. You will also find folders for each chapter to place files of importance to that chapter. Any member of the list can upload files to these folders, however we do have limited space and the List Manager will from time to time “Clean House” of older material to make room for new files. Also, anything deemed inappropriate for space here will be removed by the Manager. Please feel free to upload photos (keep your files small or zip them), trail reports, chapter newsletters or anything you think our members may be interested in. Keep in mind too, that file types are not universal, If you can, use Adobe Acrobat format - “.pdf” for documents. If that is not available to you, post them in Text format. To read or download a file, click on the folder in the list, then on the file name in the folder. To upload a file, select the folder you wish to place it in, click on “Add a File” in the upper right corner of the page, select the directory and file on your system and click "Upload".
• CALENDAR—Here you will find many of the goings on in OET—State events, Chapter events and possibly outside events of interest to us, such as clinics and Expos. Any member can place an event on the calendar, but, as above, the Manager can and will remove items that are considered inappropriate to the list. The calendar function also allows for automatic reminders sent to the list. Please use this feature sparingly and only for important OET events.
• POLLS—This is an interesting feature. Anyone can ask a question—set up an opinion poll, and members may "vote" to express their opinion on a topic. The vote is secret and only the final tally is available, either on the site or by email depending on how the poll is set up.
• DATABASE—Currently a list of OET members is bring built here—on a volunteer basis. Other information may also find its way here as time goes on.
• CHAT—Members may actually arrange to meet here and have their own chat room sessions. This service is limited to Windows based browsers however. There is no Macintosh Chat engine currently.