Y65-DG: Our New Discussion Group
Welcome to the Y65 Discussion Group!!
Dear Fellow Y65 Listserv Member:
This email follows my post yesterday on the Y65 Listserv, which hopefully you’ve seen by now.
Good News! The Class Listserv is moving to a new and better platform: the Y65 Discussion Group.
More Good News: You’ve been pre-registered as a Member, so the transition has just begun!
YAA Listserv runs on ancient technology and is now fragile and shaky. YAA can no longer support it and has urged all classes to move to alternative platforms. Nearby classes (Y67, Y69) have successfully transitioned to private Class Discussion Groups based on Google Group technology, and they’re pleased with the results: the new platform is more robust and more flexible, posted messages are much richer, searching history is very popular, and the dialogue has become more participative, more interesting, and more civil. As a result, classmate participation is way up — in Y67’s case, 50% higher in a few months.
Based on these positive experiences — and following a successful month-long trial run with a handful of current Listserv users, the Y65 Class Council approved the creation of a new private listserv-style service, the “Y65 Discussion Group” based on Google Group technology with these benefits:
- Easy-to-join: any email account can be used to subscribe; Gmail accounts are not required
- Private: restricted to Y65 classmates only, central registration assures privacy
- Secure: No non-member, including Google itself, can view posted traffic
- Easy-to-use: post and reply can either by email, and/or by secure internet login
- More content: messages can include url links, pics, videos, dox, pdfs, and other attachments
- Flexible: preferences to receive posts in real time or via daily digests, or via secure internet access
- Archives: posted history is searchable by author, date, or topic
- Sub-groups: special interest sub-groups may be added later, if the demand is there
We’re transitioning to the Y65 Discussion Group (Y65 DG) in two stages:
Stage One — Run in Parallel: As one of the 74 classmates on the listserv, your email account has been pre-registered as a Y65 Discussion Group member, and you can begin testing it out right away. (Should you wish to unsubscribe, simply send an email to morgana@downeasthost.com.)
To get started, click on these docs now resident on Yale1965.org:
- Y65 Discussion Group User Guide: basics on how to post, reply, set email receipt preferences, search the archives, and more.
- “Terms of Use Agreement”: guidelines approved by Class Council establishing “rules of the road” for Y65 Discussion Group members. Based on guidelines adopted by Y67 and Y69, whose leaders report greater respect and civility in classmate dialogue, leading to increased classmate participation, up over 50% for Y67 in just a few months!
- FAQs: further practical information about the new service.
After a short shakedown period to gain familiarity and iron out minor glitches, we’ll permanently switch to Y65 Discussion Group as our main Class communications forum. Meanwhile, the current Class Listserv will operate indefinitely, and we can use it in parallel.
Stage Two – Recruitment: After we’ve all moved, we’ll market the service to the rest of our Class, building on the enthusiasm we expect Stage One to create. We’d like to add as many new classmates as possible as a way to build excitement for our 55th Reunion in May. Doubling subscription to 150+ would be a total home run!
For any questions or comments, just email me at david.roscoe3@gmail.com. For technical assistance, you may also email Jean McKillop at morgana@downeasthost.com.
This is an exciting and long overdue Class initiative, and I look forward to engaging with all of you on the Y65 Discussion Group very soon!
If you Reply to the email you were just sent (which directed you to this page), we’ll be off and running!!
David Roscoe, aka d3
Again, here are the links to the documents we’re using to make the transition from the old listserv to the new Discussion Group (“DG”) easy and straightforward. Please use these as references. Thanks.
User Guide
Terms of Use Agreement
FAQ