Statement of Purpose
This email list is a discussion forum for topics specific to the mascoma area towns - Canaan, Dorchester, Enfield, Grafton, and Orange. It is not an 'official' list set up by the town governments. It is open to anyone who wants to participate. Residents are encouraged to subscribe and post; non-residents may subscribe, but are asked not to post.
How to ...
- Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to this group by sending a blank message to mascoma-subscribe@lists.vitalcommunities.org
- To POST a message to this list, simply email your message to mascoma@lists.vitalcommunities.org
- To be REMOVED from this list, send a blank message to mascoma-unsubscribe@lists.vitalcommunities.org
- You can contact the list manager at mascoma-request@lists.vitalcommunities.org
Posting Guidelines
Summary – Keep it Local, Keep it Civil, Limit Commercial Postings to Once a Month.
No anonymous posts – If your first and last name are not obvious from your email address, please sign your post.
The intent is to keep the discussion on and about mascoma area towns. The issue doesn't need to be unique to these towns, but it must be specific to them. Subscribers to the list are assumed to be in agreement about that simple constraint. If in doubt about whether a topic is appropriate for our list, consider this: If there are other online forums, such as email lists, news groups or blogs that address your issue, please take your discussion to one of them.
Some examples:
- Discussion of legislation in Concord/Montpelier or Washington is ok if it addresses a mascoma issue.
- Discussion of national or state issues in the context of a warned town meeting resolution is ok.
- Announcements for meetings, rallies or demonstrations in the towns, or for car pools leaving from them are ok.
- Forwarding content of emails or web sites that are not related to the mascoma area towns is absolutely not ok.
- Forwarding of copyrighted content is (obviously) not ok.
General Rules
This discussion list operates on the assumption that list postings will 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.
Because this list is set up for the convenience of the community, occasional announcements from businesses in town are ok (for example, a new business in town, information about a business service offered in conjunction with a public event taking place in town, or a one-time listing about babysitting). In no case should any business (small or large) use the discussion list for repetitive 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 this discussion list useful and dynamic, there should be no verbatim 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 on this list, please just include the address for the web page on which the article appears. the web page on which the article appears. (This may also be appropriate for lengthy blog-like posts that appear elsewhere – just summarize your point and link to the source.) 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. It is illegal to forward any copyrighted material, which includes almost any print publication and many websites. Instead include a link or just a citation to the material in question.
Please note that it is the intent of this discussion list to center on issues and events directly affecting this particular group of towns. It is not a venue for general announcements about Upper Valley events from those not connected with the town. Occasional posts from contiguous towns are ok, but, in general, if you have an event or item of interest that might be relevant to multiple towns then please post it on one of the Upper Valley lists. Subscribers who regularly post to multiple lists will be warned and eventually suspended.
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. To contact Vital Communities with comments or to bring specific issues to their attention, write to discussionlists@vitalcommunities.org .
A note on email attachments
The list 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 little 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.
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.