Community discussion lists allow members of a community to post and respond to email messages about town events, notices about town government, questions for the school board, recycling announcements, items for sale, questions about lost or found pets, etc. It’s a great way to keep up with what’s happening in your town. When you subscribe to a discussion list, you will receive an email digest with postings from your neighbors on a daily basis. (You may also change your settings to receive emails as they are posted). Subscribers may also post to the discussion list by emailing to a particular address (these instructions will be given to you when you subscribe and are located at the top of the digest each day as a reminder). Each discussion group has a volunteer from the community that is available to answer questions and to help the subscribers follow the posting guidelines. These are not “official” town discussion lists, but community town discussions. The lists are set up and managed by volunteer residents from the community not by the town government. Vital Communities works with these administrators to facilitate the overall process. The intent is to keep the discussions on and about each town. A post that concerns more than one town, should be posted on the Upper Valley Discussion List.

The Upper Valley Discussion List is a forum for addressing items of interest to the entire Upper Valley. This region-wide list allows Upper Valley residents to share events or items of interest that might be relevant to multiple towns. For example, an Upper Valley event like Flavors of the Valley, or an office space for rent should be posted in the Upper Valley Discussion List, whereas minutes from a town meeting or the opening of a town skating rink should be posted on the Town Discussion List.

Click here to see the towns that currently have Vital Communities discussion lists.

Click on the name of the discussion list you are interested in joining on this page. Once you are on the community discussion list home page, click on the link to subscribe on the left side of the page.

To set up a discussion list in your town, you will need to find one person to agree to be the administrator for the list. This person will help local residents get the most from this service by helping them to get signed up, answer any questions about the list and help subscribers follow the posting guidelines. If you are interested in helping to develop a community discussion discussion list for your town, contact stacey@vitalcommunities.org for more information.

Simply email {listname}@lists.vitalcommunities.org, where {listname} is the name of your list (e.g. Norwich, Hanover, Bradford, etc.)

The lists rejects submissions with file attachments, including images and other documents. If your submission is rejected with this error but you have not attached anything to your message, the explanation is usually that your message contains something like a background pattern or a signature with some graphic such as a Twitter, Facebook or corporate logo. If your message has any of these, the listserv will treat them as attachments. Please try sending your message without the pattern or the signature.

You can receive the discussion list as a single digest each day or multiple emails as posts are made (note: the upper valley list is only available as a single digest). Here are the directions on how you can change back and forth between these options.

1. 1. 1. Go to the VC groups list page <http://lists.vitalcommunities.org/lists/lists>
      2. Click on your list(s) of interest e.g. “norwich@lists.valley.net” <http://listsvitalcommunities.org/lists/info/norwich>
      3. In the UPPER LEFT corner, click on “New Login/Password Reset”
      4. Enter the email address you’ve used for your subscriptions
      5. You will be sent an email with login information.
      6. In the UPPER RIGHT on the home page of your list of choice e.g.<http://lists.vitalcommunities.org/lists/info/norwich> enter your username and password.
      7. On the middle-left of the refreshed page, now click on “Subscriber Options”
      8. Next to “reception mode” you’ll see a little arrow; click it and look for “standard.” Select that, then click the “Update” button(IMPORTANT!)
         
      9. To return to digest mode, follow these instructions starting at (4) but select “digestsingle”

Email listservs, including these discussion lists, are open to the public. They are not private groups. Emails sent to a your town list are available immediately, and anyone, anywhere can see anything that is sent to this list (non subscribers can view postings on the archive page). This means that the public, including 3rd party services, can see and share whatever is sent to the lists. As an example, the Daily UV, a local information and news service, subscribes to the list and shares it to the dailyUV.com web site.

dailyUV was developed by the private company Subtext Media. It is not part of Vital Communities. dailyUV.com draws much of its content from publicly available community discussion lists, such as those those run by Vital Communities, as well as local blogs and news sources. While Subtext Media has involved Vital Communities in discussions about their platform, there is no formal relationship between the two organizations. Vital Communities does not endorse dailyUV.com or Subtext Media, or recommend for or against using the platform.

The intent is to keep the discussion on and about the town. The issue doesn’t need to be unique to the town, but it must be specific to the town. For example, discussion of legislation in Concord/Montpelier or Washington is OK if it addresses a town issue and discussion of national or state issues in the context of a warned town meeting resolution is OK. While anyone is welcome to subscribe to and read these discussions, we ask that only residents, representatives of town government, and representatives of organizations and businesses located in the town post to the list associated with their town. It is not a venue for general announcements about Upper Valley events from those not connected with the town; these items should be posted to the Upper Valley Discussion List. Subscribers who regularly post to multiple lists will be warned and eventually suspended. Please use the Upper Valley Discussion List for items that might be appropriate for multiple towns.

Postings must be civil and respectful to other list members. No abusive or threatening postings will be allowed. Anyone engaging in what the administration of Vital Communities considers to be abusive language or threats directed towards another list member may have posting privileges revoked. It is inappropriate to post the content of any private correspondence to or from a list member without the express permission of all correspondents involved.

If your first and last name are not obvious from your email address, please sign your post.

Occasional announcements from businesses in town are OK (for example, a new business in town, a new product available at the general store, or a one-time listing from a new baby sitter). In no case should any business (small or large) use the discussion list for ongoing business promotion. Posting commercial announcements more often than monthly may annoy your neighbors and bring a warning from the list administrator.

In order to keep the discussion list useful and dynamic, there should be no forwarding of content that has already appeared elsewhere. If an article has appeared on the web that would be appropriate to reference in the context of a discussion, simply summarize your point and link to the source. Copyrighted content should not be posted. The administration of Vital Communities reserves the right to warn, suspend, or permanently exclude any list subscriber for any abuse or infringement of these list rules and guidelines.