This is a rather wordy document but it thoroughly covers how the News.Boquete email subscription system works. Perhaps if more folks read it the volunteer (i.e. "unpaid") administrator wouldn't have to repeat the same information over and over to folks:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/105014438/News_Boquete/News_Boquete_Policy.pdf.
The
News Boquete
Email Distribution List
What It Is and How to Use It
Historical Background
In the “early” days (circa 2000 to 2004) there were no local newspapers, magazines, or radio or television stations
that focused on or originated from the Boquete area. By approximately 2004 there were two locally sponsored
and managed information dissemination “tools” that serviced the residents and the businesses of Boquete and
the larger Chiriquí highlands area. The first information dissemination tool was a manually administered email
mailing list, which was originally referred to as “Hershel’s Email List.” That name came from the name of the
gentleman (Hershel Stolebarger) who created it and managed it for several years. The second of those information
dissemination tools was the
www.boquete.org
web site.
Hershel’s Email List is now administered by Penny Barrett, with technical support by Bud Huber. The
contemporary name used for the email mailing list is
News Boquete
. The email address for
News Boquete
is
news.boquete@gmail.com
.
In more contemporary times (beginning with early 2010) several web sites are now available, some commercially
oriented and a few community service sponsored. If you are interested in using such web sites, consider doing an
Internet search using the search argument “web sites about Boquete.” Because certain kinds of messages are not
appropriate for the email distribution resource documented herein (read more on that below), you may find it
necessary to avail yourself of the other information dissemination resources.
Be advised that the
News Boquete
mailing list is totally separate from and disassociated in any manner with the
various web sites that you may come across. The
News Boquete
email distribution system is considered to be “push
technology,” meaning that the administrators decide what is to be distributed and send it out to the email in-box
of its subscribers. Penny Barrett is the primary contact and administrator for the
News Boquete
email system. The
term subscribers is used for those who request to be on the mailing list; no one is added to the mailing list unless
they request such.
The Details of
News Boquete
— Policies, Procedures, and Related Information
The purpose of the remainder of this document is to:
•
discuss (only in high level overview) how the server
1
functions are administered,
•
document the procedures for subscribing to and unsubscribing from the email distribution list,
•
document the procedures for submitting an email to the administrator for release to the distribution list,
•
discussing how to reply to messages disseminated via this mailing list,
•
identify the points-of-contact and methods to be used for contact,
•
establish policy and provide guidance,
•
discuss privacy matters, and
•
provide a notice and disclaimer as to responsibilities and accountability.
Overview Of How The Server Functions Are Administered
Penny Barrett is the primary administrator of the
News Boquete
email distribution list and also the primary
point-of-contact. Bud Huber is the administrator of the server. An email address —
news.boquete@gmail.com
—
1
For those who may not be familiar with the term “server,” it refers to a computer whose purpose is to receive and distribute email
to distribution lists. It is generally an automated process in which moderators and list owners configure how the server is to function.
The moderators and list owners are the only ones who can authorize the release of email via the server, as well as authorize the additional
subscription, unsubscription, and change requests associated with the numerous email addresses which make up the distribution list.
has been established for the purpose of communicating with Penny in her role as administrator. Use that email
address for sending anything to her, including administrative requests (subscribe and unsubscribe requests, change
of email address, etc.), as well as final proofed copy of messages being submitted for distribution to the mailing list.
How To Subscribe And Unsubscribe To The
News Boquete
Email Distribution List
If you want to add, remove, or change your email address as subscribed to the
News Boquete
email distribution
list, there is one simple procedure to follow: send a request to
news.boquete@gmail.com
indicating what action
you want to be taken (add, delete, or change of an email address, etc.). There is no set format — simply put in plain
language what you want to achieve. Note: for administrative purposes it is extremely important to have a full name
(first and last for people, or company name) included in your request for a new subscription.
How to Prepare and Submit a Message for Distribution to the Mailing List
If you want to submit a message to the administrator for consideration for release to the distribution list,
please first be very thorough about the preparation and proofing of your content. Assure that you have indicated
what date, time, place, and points-of-contact apply; you would be surprised at the number of emails that omit
critical information. Include
no personal comments,
e.g., “Hi Penny, please send this out for me.”, etc. Avoid
sending forwarded emails for distribution; if your content is not important enough to be original source material,
then it probably is not appropriate for dissemination to the mailing list. Also, corrections and “do overs” are not
acceptable; if you are careless enough not to have prepared a complete and correct message the first time around,
then you get to suffer the consequences.
What you send to the administrator should be final, proofed, clean, spell-checked, error free, comprehensive,
understandable by language challenged readers, and ready to release. Nothing more. Period!!!!
Be especially careful about days, dates, and times in your message; ensure that the date matches the day of the
week. Avoid phrases such as “today” or “tomorrow” because your message may not be distributed on the same day
that you send it in. Corrections and resubmissions of messages with errors is frowned upon, and the editing load
on the volunteer staff is simply not justifiable. Note that the administrators normally will not change a message that
you have submitted for consideration for distribution to the mailing list.
When you have final, clean copy ready to go, without errors or extraneous comments, then send the email to:
news.boquete@gmail.com
An attachment(s) to your outgoing email is strongly discouraged because most people will not open them. If
you must use an attachment(s), please be careful with the size of the attachment(s). Messages totaling more than
about 500KB in size
2
may cause email systems to start rejecting your message. An email with a blank body segment
and all information contained in an attachment
will not be released
for distribution.
Be advised that the administrators have exclusive and final decision authority as to what will or will not be
distributed via the server.
Emails distributed to the mailing list will be dispatched from the “
news.boquete@gmail.com
” email address,
and those emails will be addressed to “
inbox@list.newsboquete.info
”. No one has visibility to other subscribers’
names or email addresses. Do not under any circumstance send an email to the
inbox@list.newsboquete.info
email
address because that is a send-only account and your message will not be responded to. It is like a “dead letter” box.
How To Reply To Messages Disseminated Via This Mailing List
If you want to reply to a message that was disseminated via
News Boquete
, please be extremely careful about
not simply replying to the incoming message. It is normal procedure for the administrators to insert a “reply-to”
email header in the outgoing message to cause email clients to reply to the proper originator (as opposed to the
2
Be careful not to confuse the size of a file on your disk with the size of a message. Images such as JPG, TIFF, PNG, and other
defacto standards such as PDFs, Word documents, etc., need to be
encoded
when attached to an email. Encoding typically increases the
size of a file by about 25% to 40%.
administrators of the mailing list). While almost every outgoing message will have a “reply-to” line added to the
headers, some email clients do not comply with Internet standards and thus ignore those headers. If you want a
reply back to your reply, you must be sure that you send your message to the appropriate originator.
Points-of-Contact
To contact Penny, send an email to
news.boquete@gmail.com
.
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change a subscribed email address, see the section above about subscribing and
unsubscribing.
To submit an email for consideration to be released to the email distribution list, send final, proofed, clean
copy to
news.boquete@gmail.com
.
Policy and Guidance
•
Your emails will be more effective if the information you want the recipients to read is included in the body
of the email as opposed to an attachment. While attachments (within constraints described elsewhere) are
permitted, as a general rule, many people do not open attachments.
•
Subscription requests must include a name (first and last for individuals, or full company name for businesses).
•
The total size of your outgoing email cannot exceed 500KB (kilobytes), and it is better to limit your email size
to 300KB or smaller.
•
Attachments are strongly discouraged; messages with all content in an attachment will be rejected.
•
A business or commercial entity is allowed to send only one
News Boquete
message in any calendar month, and
each such message must be “news” or an “event” or an “announcement”. That is, it must announce something
new like a sale, a special menu, or a temporary closing for renovation, a relocation, etc.
•
Charitable and not-for-profit organizations will be given more leniency than commercial businesses, but
should consider no more than two messages per calendar month.
•
News Boquete
will not send out classified ads nor personal messages. That means no real estate ads (for
sale, for rent, wanted to lease, etc.), no personal property messages (there are exceptions allowed for certain
garage/estate sales under special conditions that are determined by the administrators), etc. There are other
channels for distribution of those kinds of message, such as
www.boquete.ning.com
and
www.craigslist.com
,
as two examples.
•
The administrators have exclusive and final decision authority as to what will or will not be distributed via
the server.
Privacy
For those with privacy concerns, be advised that the email addresses on the server have never been divulged,
nor will they be divulged in the future, short of properly executed legal process. The email addresses are never
sold, distributed, nor made available to anyone under any circumstance.
Responsibilities and Accountabilities
The volunteer team administering
News Boquete
cannot and do not assume any responsibility or accountability
for the information being disseminated. Reasonable efforts are made to avoid obviously flawed or incorrect
information, or statements that would generally violate common sense or legal statutes. The originators are solely
and exclusively responsible for the information that they prepare and submit for dissemination, as well as the
formatting of their messages. In a similar vein, it is incumbent upon those receiving information distributed via
News Boquete
to thoroughly review, research, understand, and validate the information prior to taking any action
based on that information.