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Joining ENTS is
free. To join someone simply needs to join the discussion
list for the group and begin participating in the
discussions. Joining the list will give you access to
other people in your area and around the world interested in trees and access to some
of the foremost experts in the world on trees and measuring
trees.
Welcome
New ENTS
1) The Eastern
Native Tree Society discussion list is hosted by Google
Groups. The name of the list is ENTS Trees. The former home of the discussion list
was on Topica. There
were problems with some people sending and receiving posts that
became progressively worse over time. We started the new
list on September 24, 2007. Most of the significant posts
from the Topica list, from 2002 onward, were archived as part of the ENTS
website: http://www.nativetreesociety.org
2) To join the ENTS Discussion List go to the website http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en and
simply select "join this group" from the right side.
If you
do not already have a Google account , you will first need to create
one. The
instructions for creating a username and password are pretty self-explanatory. Whether
you previously had a Google account or not, in a few minutes you will receive a
message from Google, at the email address you provided, asking
you to confirm your registration. You will need to respond to
this message, following the instructions in the email, to
confirm your email address and to activate your account and
membership in the ENTS Trees Group.
3) You may choose one of three ways to receive the discussions:
a) copies of each email posted to the list sent individually to
your email address, b) a daily digest sent to your email
address, or c) participation via the web only. In the first
option every email posted to the discussion list is mailed
individually to your listed email address. Any attachments to
the emails are also forwarded. In digest form the messages for
each day are compiled and sent as an individual post to your
email address. Be sure to add entstrees@googlegroups.com
to your safe list for any spam filters protecting your email
account. You may also opt to not have any messages sent to you
and view the messages from the list website only. These
options may be chosen from the "Edit my Membership"
page of the list.
4) Emails may be sent by members using any email program or by
posting directly from the discussion list. To post a message you
must be a member of the list. When using an external email
program, the message must be sent the email address listed
in your account. Members may create pages or upload files
to share with the group to the ENTS list. Go to the list
home page http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en
and follow the directions to creat pages or upload files. Because of space limitations large
posts may be archived to the website and deleted from the list
after a reasonable period of time.
5) When
you join ENTS you also have the option of creating a member
profile. This profile can include a nickname, information
about your location, a quote, or a bit of a biographical
sketch. This is optional, but members are encouraged to
create a profile. For a nickname I simply use my name as
that will be how I appear when posting to the list.
6) When posting messages be sure to include a subject line in
the message. When changing the topic of a thread it is appreciated if the
subject line
is change to reflect the change in subject. Messages without
subject lines
may be filtered by some firewall or anti-spam programs and will
not be
received by all list subscribers.
7) When posting messages address the message to ENTS or to some
individual. Messages that do not include a salutation may be
filtered by
some firewall or anti-spam programs and will not be received by
all list
subscribers. Include a Salutation, such as Hello, ENTS, Bob, or
whatever.
8) When you "reply" to a message or a message thread,
you end up putting
multiple copies of every message in the thread back on the list,
doubling
and quadrupling the volume of messages the rest of us have to
wade through. If you are replying to someone's message, please delete
everything except
the relevant lines from the original message. Everyone will
already have
received a copy of the complete message. By using the default
setting which
attaches a complete copy of the original message to the
reply, bombarding everyone with multiple instances of the
same message.
9) On Google the messages are threaded. That means the messages that have the same subject heading are put together sequentially in a single thread. So long as the subject remains the same all of the posts and replies are grouped together. ENTS members should take advantage of this feature of Google. If you change the subject heading then the thread is broken and this post and replies to this post will no longer be grouped with the others.
When you start a new thread, post a meaningful description in the subject heading. Posts with subjects like "Back to George" are not particularly helpful. When replying to the same thread, members should not change the subject heading unless they are also changing the subject of the post. If you change subjects in a thread, chose a new descriptive subject heading.
10) Shouting is discouraged. Shouting is the practice of
sending emails containing large blocks of capitalized, bold face, or large font text
within the body of the message. Using these formats makes the text more difficult
to read and in general is considered to be rude when directed at an individual or the
group as a whole. The discussion list is not moderated and politeness is expected
of all participants.
11) It is easy to reply to emails by just hitting the reply
button on your email software. One word of caution
however, if you auto reply to a message sent on the forum your
reply will be posted to EVERYONE on the forum. It is a
minor inconvenience for those of us who receive and the reply,
but it can be disastrous for the person sending the errant
reply. Imagine sending an inappropriate comment meant only
for a close friend and then finding it has gone out to all parts
of the ENTS community. This could be both personally and
professionally damaging.
Discussion
List Problems
1) If you are not receiving posts from the discussion list
the most likely explanation is that anti-spam software is
blocking it from your email program. First check your
email account and see if the posts from entstrees@googlegroups.com
are being put in a junk mail or bulk mail folder. If they
are, most programs have the option to allow you to tell the
program that you want to receive these messages. If you
have a separate spam-filter program, be sure to add entstrees@googlegroups.com
to your "safe" list.
2) Another potential problem source, if you do not
receive the emails, are software blocks used by your Internet Service Provider. Your email provider
may be blocking mail from googlegroups.com. My former cable
service blocked messages from the old discussion list host at
Topica. You can call your provider and check on this if you believe it is a problem,
but likely they will not be able to correct it for just your
account. If this is the case for your email account, have the messages sent to an alternative email address
with another provider or to a web
based email account. In my case, to resolve this problem, I re-
subscribed to ENTS using a hotmail email address (http://www.hotmail.com).
Both Hotmail and Gmail (http:// are examples of free web based email accounts that
anyone can get. One advantage of these accounts is that
these addresses do not change as
you move from place to place and change internet service
providers. Outlook Express in Windows XP and older can be set to
automatically download the
messages from web-based accounts like hotmail and gmail.
3) If after trying these steps, you still are not receiving
messages from ENTS, or are unable to join the group, email me at
ed_frank@hotmail.com
and I will try to resolve the problem.
Edward Frank
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