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Using the Yahoo Forum
Forum Etiquette

Below is information on proper usage of the JHAA Yahoo forum with regard to content.

Allowed on the forum

• Discussions pertaining to neighborhood issues.

• Questions posed to the community, for example, asking for recommendations for a plumber, asking if anyone needs help to put yard trash by the street for city pickup, asking if anyone wants to start a book club, etc.

• Police crime reports posted by an officer of the Mobile Police Dept.

• Postings of neighborhood security watch information, for example, if you spot a suspicious vehicle or suspicious person in the area.

• Notices of family-friendly events around town, such as arts events, kid-centric activities, etc. (We try to be judicious in postings of this nature since such activities can also be found in the newspaper and online. We do not want to flood our forum with such notices, creating a spam-like environment.  But an occasional notice of a local event is fine.)

Not allowed on the forum

• Profanity

• Name-calling and other disrespectful language

• Spam-like postings

• Internet rumors, warnings and other such email forwards

• Jokes, even if they seem benign and inoffensive to you

• Political comments, discussions, advertisements, endorsements, etc.

• Comments which might be deemed offensive with regard to race, ethnicity or religion

• Recruiting for or general promotion of a school, church, political or other group
  (Notices of specific efforts by a group, such as collecting cans or newspapers for recycling, may be deemed acceptable.)

• Postings that do not specifically or generally relate to neighborhood issues, with the exception of notices of family-friendly events such as those listed in the "allowed" section above.

Failure to adhere to these policies may result in the member having their posts moderated.  Repeated violations may result in the member being banned from the forum all together.

Internet Email Rumors

Please do not forward internet email rumors to the JHAA group email address, unsubstantiated or otherwise.  Internet rumors that are true are extremely rare.  The overwhelming majority of the time, these rumors/warnings/notifications are false.

Examples of false rumors:

• Cell phone numbers are about to be made public!  Sign the do-not-call list now!

• You can get a $1,000 check from Microsoft if you forward this email to 10 friends!

These rumors are easy to confirm or debunk by consulting Snopes.com or UrbanLegends.com or other reputable online sources. Internet rumors are almost always false and create a nuisance when they are forwarded to groups such as our forum, which is supposed to be exclusively for issues directly related to the neighborhood.

Click & Confirm
A word of advice: If you want to send internet rumors on to your friends (again, these types of emails are not allowed on our email forum), even if there is already a link in the email which says the rumor was verified by Snopes or UrbanLegends, click the link to make certain it goes to a legitimate article and that the rumor is listed as true. Sometimes people who start these rumors include a false link that doesn't really go to Snopes or another rumor-debunking website, hoping that people won't bother to click-and-confirm.  Or, if you are worried about being taken to a spam site, don't click the link at all and simply delete the email.
 

Should I reply to an individual or the group?

When you do a standard reply to an email that came from jhaamobile@yahoogroups.com, note that your response goes out to EVERYONE on the forum.  As of April 2012, there were over 200 people on our email forum, so be aware of this.

In cases where your reply is contributing to a discussion, it is best to send your replies to the all-member address so that everyone may read your comments and respond with their own.  We always want to encourage open discussions on the forum so that many opinions can be heard.  Therefore, in general, we would rather have group discussion than one-off discussions where others are denied the opportunity to participate.

However...be thoughtful of others and help reduce extraneous emails by not responding to the entire membership if you are really directing your inquiry or response to a specific individual.

Please use good judgment to determine what constitutes a potential discussion thread for all and what is merely a response to an individual.  Avoid responding to the entire membership if you really only want to communicate with one person or ask one person a specific question that does not pertain to the rest of the group

That said, if you want to express thanks for something (e.g., thanking those who helped with a neighborhood event), it's fine to send out an email to the entire membership since it allows everyone to share in your appreciation and respond in kind with their own comments or thanks.

Message Examples - Group vs Individual

Group
Examples of messages which are appropriate to post to the entire membership:

• Can anyone recommend a good plumber?

• I've used John Doe for my plumbing work for years. I highly recommend him. His number is 555-1234.

• A guy with a red truck came to my door asking if I needed lawn services but he had no equipment with him.  Seemed suspicious to me.  Maybe he was just trying to see if my house was empty during the day.  Has anyone else seen this guy?  Has anyone actually used him for lawn services?

• I just wanted to say what a great job the party committee did this year.  This Fall Festival was the best ever!

Individual
Examples of messages which are better sent to an individual:

• Susan, I can't make the committee meeting tonight.  The kids have a special event at school.

• Joe, I have a question about that carpenter you recommended.  Do you know if he does large-scale jobs, like adding on a room?  Or does he only do small jobs like building bookcases?

• Thanks for sending me that number, Carol.  I'll call you later.

A note about Anti-Virus Software

If you do not have up-to-date anti-virus software on your computer, sometimes a virus or a malware (malicious software) program can be downloaded onto your computer through email, or if you visit an infected website.  These viruses or malware can "hijack" your email address book, sending out spam emails to everyone in your address book, such as the email address for our forum (jhaamobile @ yahoogroups.com).

To participate on our forum, you should maintain anti-virus software on your computer and keep it up to date.  These days, most internet service providers (ISPs) offer anti-virus software like Norton, McAfee or others) free for their customers.  You can download this software from the ISP's main website.  Check with your ISP (AT&T, Comcast or other) for information on how to download their free anti-virus software that automatically updates periodically with new virus definitions.

Never click any links on a suspicious looking email.  Just delete the email without following the link.  If you accidentally click a link in a suspicious email, you should be protected if you have up-to-date anti-virus software on your computer.  Your anti-virus program should block any trojan (a type of virus) that may attempt to download to your computer.

Also see these links:

Tech Tips: How to reply to an individual instead of the entire membership

Offline Conversations

Related Links on this website

Forum General Information

Using the Yahoo Forum (contents page)

Forum Etiquette and Guidelines on Usage

Offline Conversations

Forum Technical How To