| What in the tarnation 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, and share information and political developments of interest to Mounted Shooting. Collecting and maintaining a list of email addresses of OSMA members once was the responsibility of each individual member who wanted to participate in email discussions. The creation of a “List Server” greatly simplified the process. How in the heck? Any member of OSMA with email access can subscribe to the Telegraph Line list by simply sending an email to the President and he or she will add you to the group via the list manager. 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. 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 oregonmountedshooting@yahoogroups.com As Telegraph Line is a community of OSMA 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 OSMA 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 many 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. • 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 Telegraph Line, 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 “OregonMountedShooting” 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 OSMA 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 OSMA 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 Telegraph Line 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 down loadable files of interest to OSMA members. This includes documentation, Photos and other items that may be of timely interest. 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 OSMA - Shooting events, and 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 OSMA 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 OSMA members is being built here - on a volunteer basis. Other information may also find its way here as time goes on. |
OMSA Telegraph Line
Oregon Mounted Shooting Association
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