The History of HASnotes

Subject: Hartford Audubon notes introduction
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 13:34:27 -0400
From: Hartford Audubon notes <hasnotes@gmail.com>
To: Fred Nowak <FredNowak@comcast.net>


HAS birders,

From time to time Hartford Audubon has a need to quickly get out a message. The most likely need is for the status of a trip but we have also canceled meetings because of snow. Sometimes there is an event to publicize.

I am establishing an e-mail list to be of help. Members, especially trip leaders, can send me an e-mail and I will forward it to the HAS notes distribution. My role is simply to provide a central e-mail account with a distribution list and to forward messages. I will not be editing the e-mails I receive.

The HAS notes distribution used for this note was created from e-mail addresses I have saved over time. It is not from the official HAS membership list. It only has 27 addresses. New names will be added to the list by request - preferably by e-mail to HASnotes@gmail.com or FredNowak@comcast.net. Obviously the 27 people getting this message have not made such a request. I plan to leave these names on the list unless requested otherwise. Please let me know if you want me to remove your name from the HAS notes distribution list.

My current thought is to send the notes as a blind CC so that the names on the list are not shown on the message. Maybe it would be better to let everyone see the distribution list so they can find e-mail addresses for particular people. I welcome your thoughts on this.

I expect to receive suggestions and concerns from some of you. I will forward these to the list and use them to improve the process.

Fred Nowak



This message above is the first message from HASnotes in August 2007. The date tells me that I had been to only one Board meeting when HASnotes started. The principles have not changed. The offer I made to merge HASnotes and HartfordAudubon adopts a new set of principles that I thought appealed to at least one person on the Board.

It changed from an email distribution list to a Google Group when Comcast started threatening me because I was a spammer.

The operating rules are:

  • Aside from the first batch of 27, HAS members must ask me to sign then up for HASnotes.
  • All group members may post.
  • Any topic that appeals to group members is acceptable for posting.
  • The group is self monitoring. Bad behavior is subject to the wrath of the group members.

There are 153 members of the HASnotes Google Group.

I prefer to keep HASnotes as it is. I made my offer to merge HASnotes and HartfordAudubon to preserve the peace.







In 2012, before she was vice-president, Sara Zagorski announced at a Board meeting that she wanted to stop doing the mailing function for The Crest and that we should send out The Crest by email. The Board agreed and a discussion of email methods persued. Several members wanted to keep things simple and send out The Crest with HASnotes. I pointed out that HASnotes does not go to all HAS members. It was suggested that everyone in the club be added to HASnotes but I pointed out that many members do not want to get all the HASnotes messages. It was agreed to start a new Google Group for the purpose of distributing The Crest. I quickly added other official notices from HAS to its purpose. Since the official notices are what members are purchasing with their dues it made sense to add all members, without asking, to HartfordAudubon. We were simply emailing things we were mailing. This worked great until Maggie started sending out other kinds of messages on HartfordAudubon. As a result, I no longer automatically add all members to HartfordAudubon as part of the memberhip function. Instead, we send all new members an invitation they can accept or reject.

There are 446 email addresses in HartfordAudubon Google Group.

My preference would be for HartfordAudubon to be restricted to official organization messages only.







Currently, There is no clear cut distinction between the purposes of HASnotes and HartfordAudubon. This leads to confusion, errors and many comments. My offer to merge HASnotes and HartfordAudubon was an effort to eliminate this problem. It is not my preferred solution. I was trying to make peace.


Fred





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