LHHA Neighborhood E-Mail Clarification

Hello Veda-

I’m just back from a two-week vacation and read your e-mail concerning the FORUM posting regarding a person interested in renting a house in our neighborhood.  I want to address your concerns:

Notice of Interest In A Rental House:

I think the person posting this item went about it in the correct way.  They put out the request, giving the requestor contact information, rather than providing any of our neighborhood’s e-mail addresses to the interested individual.  That kept our e-mail listing confidential within our neighborhood membership.  I congratulate the posting individual for letting our neighbors, who might have a rental,  know of the interest.  Much better to populate an empty rental than to have it sit idle.  Informational memos like this are not going to affect anyone’s decision on whether to make a house a rental or not.   Also, we have a “Classifieds” section of our website which was created for just this and similar sales item purposes.  (Of course, our neighborhood has long ago agreed to refrain from political or religious postings.)  Services offered to our neighbors can be found on the “Andy’s List” under the Resources tab.

E-Mail Systems:

Over the past years, we have had three different methods of communicating with each other-

1) The old Yahoo “List-Serve” System.  There is no administrator for this system.  Anyone who wants to (in the neighborhood, or not in the neighborhood – even in Russia) can join and get memos.  Not a safe or efficient method – hardly anyone still uses it, I assume.

2) The old “Google Group” System.  It was implemented about three years ago to put some neighborhood controls (local administrator) on who is on the distribution list.  A member wanting to post would have to respond to “All” in an existing, earlier e-mail from the administrator to assure that their memo got to all members.  Somewhat confusing, but the best we had, since the first website we put up did not provide for any e-mail distribution.  Currently, this method may still be out there, but it is not updated and it is no longer monitored by anyone.  It is not recommended, since the membership list is outdated and full distribution to current membership is not guaranteed.

3) The current website FORUM e-mail system.  This is the best way to communicate.  E-mail addresses are periodically updated by “Administrators”, based on paid-up members.  E-mail addresses are not shown on the posted e-mails, promoting security.  The individual updated e-mail addresses are available to members only in a website file (under “Resources”.)  If a person is still concerned about their e-mail address confidentiality, they can opt to have their address on the list “redacted” so that no neighbor can look it up.

Veda, hope this helps allay some of your concerns.

Best regards,

John Haynes