Raynes Park and West Barnes Residents' Association
Serving the community since 1928
The Association's new messageboard was set up (in October 2001) mainly to allow members of the Residents' Association to make their own contributions to the Web without the webmaster's assistance. Although it is primarily intended for the use of Association members, I think we should also welcome contributions from other local residents (whom we can then try to persuade to join the Association !) and from anyone else with an interest in the area (such as former residents who have now moved away).
We should still ensure that any important information which should be brought to the attention of all Association members appears as soon as possible in the monthly printed "Guide", which will remain our primary form of communication with the membership. However, the messageboard can be used to draw the attention of the Association's committee and of other members to new topics for discussion, and to gather a range of opinions without having to wait for the next monthly meeting. It could also be used for more frivolous discussions (though still on topics directly related to the Raynes Park and West Barnes area, please), or for getting answers to questions such as "Can anybody recommend a good local plumber ?".
Technically, the messageboard is not part of our website, but is one of a large number of "Groups" hosted by "Yahoo!", a company which began by providing a directory of other websites but now offers many other on-line services. Yahoo! is (comparatively) long-established and seems very unlikely to go out of business in the near future, so should be a good host for our own "group".
There is no cost involved to the Association or to any "group" members for using these services (other than what you usually pay for Internet access, of course) ; I'm not sure what Yahoo! get out of it ; I suppose they just hope that you'll take enough notice of the advertisements which appear here and there to make it worth the advertisers' while to continue to pay for them. You can also opt in to receiving e-mail messages from the usual "selected other companies", if you like.
Please note that although each group's founders have some control over the appearance of the group pages, Yahoo! have the final say in the facilities provided and the layout. Unlike on some messageboards, you are not limited to "posting" text messages - you can also upload photographs and other types of file, make entries in a diary which all other readers will be able to see, and even take part in on-line chats if another member is logged in to the board at the same time as you.
There is some bureaucracy involved before you can contribute anything to the group ; you have to register with Yahoo! and use your Yahoo! ID and password to log in any time you visit the group and want to add material to it. This allows the founder of each group (and any "co-founders" whom they appoint) to keep some control over who can contribute to the group ; this is important as messageboards can be ruined by one or two individuals persistently submitting large number of irrelevant or offensive messages. If everyone who can contribute to the board has to log in first, their access can be blocked if they begin to cause problems ; though I hope there will be no need for that here.
When you register for your Yahoo! ID, those of you with less unusual names may well find that all the obvious combinations of your name and/or initials have already been taken, because the ID has to be unique among all registered Yahoo! users anywhere in the world. After rejecting a couple of IDs which have already been taken, you'll find that it suggests adding an apparently random number to the end of the ID you had suggested ; you can accept this if you like, or try to think up a more meaningful variation (as I did by adding my postcode to the first-name-plus-initial-of-surname combination which is my login name on the computer systems at work, and so ended up as "timmsw20"). By all means choose some kind of bizarre nickname if you like - anyone can see the group's list of members and find out who they really(?) are from the details they provided when they registered - but you might find that it soon becomes an embarrassment !
Currently, this is a "listed" group, which means that it appears in the Yahoo! directory of groups and anyone can join (as long as they have already registered with Yahoo!, perhaps in order to become a member of another group or use other services). If it becomes necessary to restrict access further, the group can be made "unlisted" ; it will then no longer show up in the directory, and nobody will be able to join unless they have received an (e-mail) invitation from an existing member. I will try to get the group started by issuing invitations to regular correspondents and posting a few topics for discussion.
However, whether the group is listed or not, anybody with Web access will always be able to read everything on it ; even if it is no longer listed by Yahoo!, readers would be able to follow the link from our main website. So please make sure that you do not add anything which you would not want the general public to see (obviously, you should follow Yahoo!'s Community Guidelines and Group Rules about offensive material or other misuse of the services they provide, but you should also consider whether, for example, sensitive information about Residents' Association business should be put in the public domain).
Yahoo! provide comprehensive help about how to join a "group" and then how to use its facilities, and although the sheer amount of documentation may look daunting to begin with, you'll probably find the answer to your questions after a little bit of searching. However, please get in touch with me if you still have a problem ; if not, see you on the messageboard !
Tim Miles