We choose to live in this extraordinary rural environment for any number of personal reasons. One of those, for many people, is the quiet and solitude. The only downside to solitude is missing the sense of community readily available within the city. But with new technology we can have a bit of this other world without sacrificing privacy. Google "groups" allows a collection of those with common interests to communicate in an unobtrusive, yet efficient manner. We have set up such a group for members of the neighborhood association. You will find it at: http://groups.google.com/group/LVRMNA.
This is not meant to be Twitter ("I'm combing my hair now") nor a place for political advocacy ("My candidate is great; yours stinks") nor a place for philosophical discourse ("Ayn Rand's Objectivisim is nuts"). It is a place for neighborhood discourse. So what would you use it for?
What kind of messages might you find on our LVRMNA group site? Here are just a few that might be of interest to your neighbors:
You could click on any one of these (fictional) message titles to see the full content. You could reply, and someone could reply to your reply, and so on ad infinitum. Each message becomes a separate track.
In order for this neighborhood discussion group to be valuable, we need to reach a certain threshold, perhaps fifty or so members. What do you say? Want to join us?
If so, send an email to LVRMNA@gmail.com. You will be sent an invitation from Google that you can accept or reject. If you do want to join, you will need to join Google (I think). (If you check the “No email” box when joining Google, you will receive no subsequent email traffic from Google .) After joining Google you will then have 4 options to choose from when you join our LVRMNA group:
We recommend either (2) or (4). With these two choices you will receive an email message notifying you of the message which you can then choose to view on the LVRMNA group web site--or not. If you choose (1) you will be able to view the group messages only by logging onto the web site and will receive no email alert. If you choose (3) it may be days before you receive notice on this low traffic group. We have chosen (4), in part because we hope to receive advance notice on fire issues. But whatever you choose you have the option to edit your options at any time. And of course you may unsubscribe from the group altogether.
(Google's "captcha" is a harder than usual to get past. Captchas are those squiggly, distorted sequence of letters and numbers that you have to guess and type into a box in order to prevent hackers and mischief-makers from wrecking havoc with Google groups. Be patient.)
You will see below a screen-shot of another neighborhood discussion group, the Nogli (don’t ask) neighborhood group. Each line is a “post,” a message submitted by a member. Each line lists the topic, the number of replies, and the chosen nickname of the original author. (If you wish to see the web site and examine their neighborhood issues, go to: http://groups.google.com/group/nogli-news/topics)
