When I started our email group I knew that there would be people using it that had never been on one before. These are our basic guidelines:
Although we would like for this list to be an outlet for information and ideas, there are a few rules that we ask everyone to respect:
--This list is not for commercial use and cannot be used for solicitation or political promotion. Any messages that are regarded as "self promotion" will be removed. Please don't use this list to promote your business, ebay sales, garage sale, etc. Any solicitation will be removed.
--Please use respectful and courteous language. Remember that a real person is on the other end of the email you are sending and we all respond better when a topic is discussed in a friendly manner. Any foul language or attempt to create a hostile conversation will be removed.
--This list does not accept email attachments due to the risk of computer viruses and other computer nasties out there.
I also have included a reminder that they need to remember that when they post it goes to everyone so that this is not the place to be having private conversations!
We use email quite a bit with our Board and key volunteers, but we haven't gone to a email listserv type service yet.
Friarfan makes a good point about privacy. If you are simply using standard emails sent to a large group, you can place all the names in the BC field. (You'll have to put one name in the "to" field.) This not only hides all the email names but streamlines the message. If someone prints it or forwards it, they don't have 300 email addresses cluttering up the message text. Of course, this way prevents listwide discussion and they can only respond to the sender. But it is good for information blasts.
A discussion list or listserv is a great tool as everyone posts messages to one address, and then software automatically distributes the message to list members. As far as guidelines, you may want to start with "The Net: User Guidelines and Netiquette, by Arlene Rinaldi". This is a pretty popular source for many listservs. www.rdc.com.au/Netiquette.html
If I am guessing correctly, your email loop is for letting your parents know what is going on. If that is correct, then we have one of those in place also. We are going to amend our by-laws to include email and our new pto website.
Basically, we just put "the email addresses given to the standing committee will only be used for the sole purpose of PTO and School information. We are not in the practice of selling or sharing email addresses. And therefore only the Committee Chairpersons will be given this information."
Also, the person that does this for us has a bulk mailing system that only lists the address of the person that is receiving the email. So you don't get a list of everyone elses addresses. People like to know that their address is not being copied to be used by someone else. You can't control it on the personal level, but as a PTO you should try to respect as much privacy as you can. [img]smile.gif[/img]
We have recently estalished an email loop that is "closed" (available only to our school families and staff). We need to establish some guidelines for the loop. Does anybody have any in place that they would share?
