Community Discussion Lists

Community Engagement through Local Community Discussion

A Digital Forum for Engaged, Welcoming Communities

How do you find out what happened at your town Select Board meeting? What roads to avoid in mud season? Who’s performing at the community coffee house? Whose cat is missing? Or what your neighbors think of the pending school budget? For this kind of information about their town, thousands of Upper Valley residents turn to the Vital Communities Community Discussion Lists (CDLs)!

The CDLs are a digital forum that delivers to your email inbox news of topics and events that enliven our towns and help them function. Each CDL focuses on an individual municipality or location. Vital Communities offers the CDLs free of charge as a tool for making our communities more vibrant and welcoming by sharing short posts about pertinent topics and events, posted by members of that list.

CDL membership is a privilege, not a right, and is predicated on conforming to the Posting Guidelines (see below). Each list is monitored by a volunteer Moderator from that list’s community who helps members follow the Posting Guidelines and takes action (including warnings or membership suspension or revocation) when necessary.

Have something you want to share that doesn’t fit the CDL guidelines? Try the following:

Our Upper Valley Discussion List for posts that pertain to more than one town; or
Topic Lists, which currently include these topics:

The CDLs were started by ValleyNet. In 2014, they were passed to Vital Communities.

Community Discussion Lists Posting Guidelines

Keep It Local
Post about topics and events that pertain to the town that CDL serves. 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. Do not post announcements about items not connected with that town; post these to Upper Valley Discussion List. Do not post information about topics without a local “hook”; consider posting to a Topic List (scroll up for current Topic Lists).

Keep It Civil
No abusive or threatening postings will be allowed. 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.

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

Limit Commercial Postings
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 babysitter). 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.

Keep It Original
In order to keep the discussion list useful and dynamic, do not forward content that has already appeared elsewhere. If an online article is appropriate to reference, simply summarize your point and link to the source. Copyrighted content should not be posted.

Discussion Lists FAQ

How do the Community Discussion Lists work?

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 Moderator from the community who 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.

Upper Valley Discussion List vs Community Discussion Lists

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 a concert 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.

Which towns already have Discussion Lists?

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

How do I subscribe to a Discussion List?

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.

How do I set up a list for my town?

To set up a discussion list in your town, you will need to find one person to agree to be the Moderator for the list. This person will help local residents get the most from this service by helping people become subscribed, post successfully, and follow the Posting Guidelines. If you are interested in helping to develop a community discussion list for your town, contact rob@vitalcommunities.org for more information.

How do I post a message to my list?

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

My message was rejected because of an attachment - why?

The lists reject 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, your message may contain a background pattern or a signature containing a graphic image 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.

How can I receive the list as a single digest (or a single email)?

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’s how to select your preference:

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”

Who can read postings on my Discussion List?

Email listservs, including these Discussion Lists, are open to the public. They are not private groups. Emails sent to a Community Discussion List are publicly visible immediately, and anyone anywhere can see anything that is sent to this list (nonsubscribers can view postings on the archive page). This means that the public, including third-party services, can see and share whatever is sent to the lists.

Who owns the Discussion Lists?

The CDLs, Upper Valley Discussion List, and Topic Lists are owned by Vital Communities, a nonprofit corporation, and are governed by the guidelines Vital Communities sets. Vital Communities operates the Discussion Lists as part of its mission to help build community and create equitable solutions to our region’s challenges. Membership on a List is a privilege, not a right, and is predicated on conforming to the Posting Guidelines.

Legal Disclaimer

Vital Communities does not control and assumes no legal or editorial responsibility for any content distributed through the community discussion lists. Content is generated by individual subscribers, who each bear responsibility for their individual postings. Content posted to the discussion lists is automatically distributed to the subscribers and Vital Communities cannot retract or modify any such content before it is sent to subscribers. All historical content is publicly accessible in the archives (Vital Communities can remove content from the archives after the fact upon request from the original poster). Volunteer individual discussion list administrators in each town are responsible for post-facto monitoring of the content of a town discussion list and may, at their own discretion, issue private warnings to individual subscribers or public guidelines to the entire discussion list if, in their sole judgment, any of the Posting Guidelines or General Rules are repeatedly violated.

Community Discussion List Staff

Rob Schultz

Director, Place-Based Education

At Vital Communities since 2018, Rob manages projects including Leadership Upper Valley and the Community Discussion Lists and works with…