Folks,

Exactly one year ago, we said we'd try to introduce a web-based forum but not lose the email. (Post can be found here http://archive.iwai.ie/forum/read.php?1,31035)

We think we're ready to do so!

For those who like email, there'll be no change, no need to do anything at all, just continue as you are.
For those who like web-based fora, you can continue to use email or switch to the forum.
For those who currently receive the digest, there'll be an alternative (but the digest also continues)
There will be some restrictions on the level of interoperability, but it should become very clear very quickly

Since at least 2005, we’ve planned to introduce a web-based forum to facilitate discussion among members. However, one thing holding us back, apart from time, has been the desire to hold onto our email-based waterways list.

Well, we think we’ve finally succeeded and are ready to launch our forum at www.iwai.ie/forum

Will the list still work?

Yes – emails to and from the waterways list will continue as usual. The same goes for those on the digest.

However, in addition, posts made on the web-based forum will be sent to the waterways list and emails sent to the list will appear on the web-based forum. The forum checks for new incoming emails every 13 minutes, so there will be a small delay.

Posts originating from the web-based forum will be in plain text and images or other attachments posted to the forum will not be forwarded to the mailing list. Attachments will be stripped form emails sent to the list before being posted to the forum.

Do I need to change the way I use email?

Well, a little more discipline will help the forum look more attractive! So we’ve a few simple “rules”.

1. If you want to start a new discussion (or thread), chose a sensible description for the “subject line” and create a "new email" - do not start a new topic by replying to an existing topic and modifying the subject line!;


2. When you reply to a post, please don’t modify the subject line.


3. Don’t include the earlier email in your reply. If you do, we’ve introduced some pretty crude rules to chop redundant material from incoming emails (to the forum). Essentially, we chop off anything that follows:
   
   
   
   • 5 dashes “-----“
   
   
   • 5 underlines “_____”
   
   
   • and a few more.
   
   


4. A result of rule 3 above is that there’s no point in putting a comment at the end of an earlier email.


5. For those of you with fancy signatures, please put 5 or more dashes (-----) at the end of your email – that way, we chop off the signature before posting to the forum – alternatively leave it there.


6. Generally, you will want to keep your email address away from any forum. All instances of the symbol ‘@’ are replaced by ‘[AG]’ when emails are posted, so the text “contact Joe at joe@bloggs.com” will appear as “contact Joe at joe[AG]bloggs.com”.


7. If you want people to see any attached images, then you must use the forum. Email users will receive a link to the web-based forum post..

Censorship!

Please note that since the contents of emails and posts will be findable with Google or similar search engine (although we could also exclude them…), we may take a more proactive role in monitoring the content of posts. i.e. we may decide that potentially defamatory remarks have been made or indeed that a discussion is descending into some morass of incivility and we may as a result delete “offending” posts or threads. We would ask for your forebearance if we appear to be too trigger-happy or heavy handed. We have the best interests of the association in mind (even if our actions appear to be wrong!).

Any quick way to see new posts?

Right, there are a few ways to do this. Firstly, the system remembers what you’ve already viewed and so will make each thread with a (new) marker when a new response appears.

For those of you who want to do few mouse clicks, simply go to http://www.iwai.ie/forum/latest which will redirect appropriately or wherever you see the RSS logo

I'm a Waterways List User, How can I use the forum also?

Simply go to the forum click on "Log In " and put your email address in the box where it says "Did you forget your password?" - You'll be sent a username/password combination. You can change the Password to something that suits you better. You can also change your "Display Name", i.e. the name that appears with your posts on the web-based forum.

We'll start a separate thread for requests for changes, improvements, etc.

I'm a Waterways List User, I want to drop that and only use the web-based forum?


Simply go to the forum click on "Log In " and fill in the box where it says "Did you forget your password?" - You'll be sent a username/password combination. You can change the Password to something that suits you better. You can also change your "Display Name", i.e. the name that appears with your posts on the web-based forum.

Now send an email to waterways-unsubscribe@iwai.ie (from the account where you normally receive waterways email). Reply to the confirmation email you receive.

I'm a Waterways Digest User, I want to drop that and only use the web-based forum?

Simply go to the forum click on "Log In " and fill in the box where it says "Did you forgt your password?" - You'll be sent a username/password combination. You can change the Password to something that suits you better. You can also change your "Display Name", i.e. the name that appears with your posts on the web-based forum.

Now send an email to waterways-digest-unsubscribe@iwai.ie (from the account where you normally receive waterways email) Reply to the confirmation email you receive.

The Archive.

Almost all old emails are in the archive (1999-2007) - It contains >33,000 posts. See http://archive.iwai.ie

The following was added 08/01/2009
Subject Lines for emails and thread names for posts:

The background is that some people read and write to this forum/list via email, others via the web. If you never interfere with a subject line and only send the odd comment then stop reading here and go back to work or sleep - the rest can read on ...smiling smiley
==
First the Web:
==
Interacting via the web, one can change subject lines to one's hearts content and they will still retain context because the new post is explicitly in reply to an earlier post or else its starting a new thread.

However doing this annoys the people on email since it becomes hard to follow a topic or thread (if the subject line changes) so please don't do it!

Simple rule for those interacting by the web:
1) if its a new topic, start a new thread - refer to an older thread if necessary.
2) if you're sticking to the subject matter in a reply, then son't change the subject line.
NOTE that where a topic has tended to drift off the subject line, the moderators will occasionally modify the title of the thread (by modifying the first post).

==
Now Email:
==

Those interacting by email can experience or cause other problems.
1) we cut off emails from the point where four dashes appear - put your comments at the beginning of an email, not at the end.
2) Creating an email from scratch with a new subject line is perfect and correct - make the subject something sensible and preferably more than one word.
3) if you rake an existing mail with subject line "IWN", click reply but change the subject to "the weather", then the web-based forum will put the new mail into the old thread instead of creating a new thread (since it was a reply) - this is a feature, not a bug since its handling a reply and ignoring the fact that someone (or their email client) may have altered the subject line.
4) if you create a new mail from scratch but with the subject line equal to an existing thread, a new thread will be started - since its not a reply to an existing thread.
5) sending attachments by email is not permitted and they will not appear in the forum - if you want to include a picture then you need to use the web-based forum, not email. If you want to include a poem or song as an attachment, then you need to include the text in the email and not as a separate file.

==
Finally, if one soes want to start a new thread or spawn a new one, then its standard (?) practice to say for example "Future of IWAI (was IWNs)"

We try to hide the vagaries of having two parallel systems by reuniting stray posts with their parent thread on the forum but it would be nicer if we didn't have to do this too often. Don't let any of the above stop your valued input/contributions.
Michael



Edited 9 time(s). Last edit at 15/06/2010 10:52 by Michael Slevin.

On March 24th, RTE are due to abandon its users of old-style technology (ref my 1936 Philco 3-valve below) - we chose not to do so and to keep the immediacy of email while embracing the user friendliness of the web-based forum
Michael




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 20/03/2008 00:54 by Michael Slevin.

Well done Michael. A fantastic job of merging both the email list and the bulletin board.

I love the old wireless

Folks,
Paddy's original email re Invasive Species - [www.iwai.ie] contains 5 dashes after his
"FYI
Paddy" text. I'm not picking on you Paddy, but you'll have to post again
;-)
As per the restrictions on emails appearing on the web-based forum, all text
after the 5 dashes is dropped and will not appear on the web-based forum.
Ditto for everything in this email after my name!
Please remember to (a) remove the "dashes Original Message dashes" when you
want to include something or (b) to include them when you want everything
below them chopped.
Again, remember:
1) If you want to start a new discussion (or thread), chose a sensible
description for the ?subject line? - don't have it start with "Re:" or "Fw".
Don't base your NEW topic on an earlier email or the email will be
incorrectly threaded on web-based forum.

2)When you reply to a post, please don?t modify the subject line.

3) Don?t include the earlier email in your reply. If you do, we?ve
introduced some pretty crude rules to chop redundant material from incoming
emails (to the forum). Essentially, we chop off anything that follows 5
dashes, 5 underlines, and a few more.

A result of rule 3 above is that there?s no point in putting a comment at
the end of an earlier email.

For those of you with fancy signatures, please put 5 or more dashes (



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/04/2008 00:49 by Michael Slevin.

Michael,
Thanks for the clarification.
I'll try again to see if I can get it right.
I suppose there is no point asking for a logical reason for all these rules.

O brave new world..!!!
Regards Paddy



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 30/03/2008 00:17 by Michael Slevin.

> I suppose there is no point asking for a logical reason for all these
> rules.
No problem Paddy,
(and I realise that this is off the original topic)
People who read this post/email on the web will already have seen/read the
previous email. So all that they are interested(?) in is this small
snippet.
On email, its traditional to include the earlier email below the current
comment. The usual separation in Microsoft land is 5 dashes followed by the
text "Original Message" followed by five dashes. So, when we take an
incoming email and parse it before pushing it onto the web-forum, we only
include the part of the message up to "5 dashes".
Have a look at this post as it appears to you now on email and as it will
appear on the forum at [www.iwai.ie]
To be honest, I thought the 5-dash rule the simplest possible to indicate a
cut-point in an email. All text up to 3 dashes will appear on the web-based
forum. Text that occurs after 5 dashes will not appear on the web version.

Michael

>People who read this post/email on the web will already have seen/read the
previous email. So all that they are interested(?) in is this small
snippet.

Thanks for the comprehensive reply Michael. I got used to just scrolling
down to see the context of the extract from the previous message. I guess I
will miss that facility but its a small price to pay for the excellent
service you are providing.
Just imagine if we all had to go out and buy stamps and envelopes to
communicate with 400 other people interested in boats and boating!!
Paddy

hear ! hear!

Don't worry Paddy - Stick to the email and nothing should seem to have
changed. The 5 dashes and other guidelines are merely to make the web-based
forum look more like a "normal" web-based forum. The fact that many will
continue to view and contribute by email will give a distinctive character
to the IWAI forum that casual viewers will quickly discern - this
distinctive character being independent of the odd-ball creatures that
inhabit it (myself included).
Michael

Dear listees

Could I make a gentle request to our email users.

Could folks please consider removing unnecessary "original message text" from the bottom of their email replies before posting emails to the forum. I appreciate there are times when folks need to respond to specific points in a previous post in which case it is normal internet etiquette to include same prefixed with the ">" character. Unfortunately sometimes folks just hit reply with the entire thread included in the bottom of their email reply as "original message text", and after a few replies this can cascade into a lot of unwieldy text (ie the reply tex is tiny and almost lost in the maze of previous text).

Not a big deal, but it would just be nice and keep replies uncluttered.

Many thanks

Noel

PS: This does not effect posts made using the web forum. Web users have the option of using the "quote" facility for including some text from prior posts.

Hi Noel

I assume that was directed at me, but even if not, I'm certainly as "guilty" as anyone!
Can we please set down, once and for all, what is the correct way of doing this?
I thought the approved method was to place 5 or more "-" symbols together, so as to alert the forum software to the presence of repeated text. Useful, as all forum readers have to do is scroll up to read the entire thread.
Emailers, however have no such facility and the convention was to have the original message and any previous replies at the bottom of each posting, so as to enable the reader to put the message currently being read into contect.
This convention lapsed when the forum got started, but the mechanism for manually continuing it was put in place, as I describe above.
There was a post recently, requesting that emailers include the message they were responding to, as the response taken in isolation didn't make sense.
Now we have a request, from a Person-In-Authority, no less, to do the opposite!
I know your gut response to this will be to get rid of the email format, but assuming that's a non-starter (hopefully!), can we have a definitive etiquette for the next best option, please? Pretty please?
Thanks

Duncan

I have to say I never found this practice particularly egregious on this
forum compared to a particular Yahoo group to which I subscribe and which is
predominantly American where the previous postings can run on for hundreds
of lines.

To my knowledge the original groups used bottom posting but Microsoft came
along and instituted top posting, and everyone knows Microsoft rule the
world. IMHO bottom posting made more sense as it allowed one to scan
previous contributions to the thread. However the convention was also to
"snip" comment you considered superfluous to your own following gems of
wisdom. You merely typed 'snip' at the start of the section you intended to
cut out. This was in way of a courtesy and also to let the reader see you
were not attempting to alter someones posting.

But with the advent of top posting most old postings remain effectively
invisible off the bottom of the page as it were.

Most good news reader will change the colour of old message content leaving
the insertion of a line of " - - - - " not really needed.

This all prevailed aeons ago before the advent of broadband and high speed
internet connections. ( Which I know we don't all have )



Paul Mc Cann

>snip
>


> Can we please set down, once and for all, what is the correct way of doing
> this?
>
> >snip

>

Quote:

Duncan
> I assume that was directed at me

No Duncan Not really, more a general request due to the increased occurances last week. It's not a problem more of a nicety and for clarity.

Quote:

Duncan
> I thought the approved method was to place 5 or more "-" symbols together, so as to alert the forum software to the presence of repeated text.

Quite correct, and many email clients do this automatically and add something like "-------------- original message -----------" before the previous message body. The forum import software stops importing a new post as soon as it hits a line starting with 5 minus characters (ie "-----"). It is just that some users email clients don't prefix "original message text" with such a line and hence the text does make it back into the forum.

Quote:

Duncan
> There was a post recently, requesting that emailers include the message they were responding to, as the response taken in isolation didn't make sense.

Yes if folks are responding to a specific point via email it may suit and is good practice to include "the point" in a reply prefixed by the ">" chartacter. Web users alternatively use the [ quote ] tags to mark previous text. I suppose the point is the entire previous message may not be needed just the point being replied to.

Entire previous posts aren't neccesary to follow a conversation, that's what the post title is for. Some email clients support threading but are not set up that way by default.

Quote:

Duncan
> I know your gut response to this will be to get rid of the email format

Not at all, email works and many folks are entirely happy with it. We have the best of both worlds.

Summary:
1. Most email clients do add a line with at least 5 minus chars (ie: "-----") before original message content, hence there is no problem as the forum strips this out automatically (ie email users don't need to remove it)
2. Some emails come through to forum with original text because they didn't have a line of "-----" before the original text
3. The request was simpy if folks email client doesn't do this would they consider removing the unnecessary test before sending email replies.
4. Including some original message points prefixed with ">" character in replies is normal and can be quite useful.

Sorry for confusion. Hope this helps.

OceanFroggie

Some figures have been corrected below since the date of its original posting!

I though the following might be of interest to a few ...

The table and graph below show the approximate number of forum posts & emails for each year since 1999 (email users will have to click on the link to see the graph) - Note that the figures below are not 100% accurate - some posts were removed when we moved to the forum.

Total no of posts/emails are:
Year	Total
1999	1788
2000	2889
2001	2868
2002	4403
2003	3699
2004	3872
2005	4724
2006	4918
2007	4771
2008	4642
2009	7106
2010	8950

Contributors with more than 500 posts over the past 11 years are ...

Contributor	Posts
Noel Griffin 	 5,149 
Dave McCabe 	 3,848 
Colin Becker	 3,231 
Brian J Goggin	 3,016 
Shane Kennedy	 1,224 
Mick Farrell 	 1,164 
Peter Kingston 	 908 
Sven Neubert 	 905 
P.J. Norris	 829 
Duncan Cremin	 818 
Paul Mc Cann 	 791 
John Kinsella 	 686 
Paddy Mackey 	 677 
Michael Slevin 	 668 
Conor Nolan 	 646
Alun Goodall 	 627 
M.G. Kerr 	 617 
Tom Bailey	 609 
Niall Galway	 581 
Leslie O'Hora 	 571 
Les Saunders 	 566 
Richard Ellis 	 530

A huge thank you to them and to the 364 of you who posted messages in 2010 (255 via the forum and 109 via email) and who give so freely of your time and knowledge. At the moment ...
1,095 people are subscribed to the Forum (390 have logged in to the forum during 2010)
250 receive the posts by email (the waterways list)
150 receive the posts in digest format by email (the waterways digest list).
570 people receive our IWAI News posts by email.

In May 2010, there were 218,000 reads of forum posts (i.e. reading a page similar to this, if you're reading this on the forum rather than email!) and 29,000 polls of the RSS feed - don't forget that its not just subscribers who read the posts! So be nice!

Our events diary and news page ( [www.iwai.ie] ) gets viewed ~3,000 times a month so branches should ensure that their planned events are listed!

Other pages such as the chandlery page, rentals pages etc. get viewed between 1,000 and 2,000 times a month depending on the time of year. We do count how many times people click on our advertisers and other waterways businesses that we list on the website, roughly 100,000 referrals to the industry in Ireland in a given year.
The figures for the month of May 2010 were:

Chandlers, 4,530 
Educationals, 182 
Insurers, 491 
Marinas, 996 
Rentals,  4,000 
Surveyors, 225 
A total of 10,424 referrals in May 2010.

More details of this can be found on our advertising page [www.iwai.ie]

Can I wish all a prosperous, healthy and peaceful 2011.
Michael



Edited 8 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/2011 00:02 by Michael Slevin.

Very interesting stats Michael. I think if there are any thanks due, it is to your goodself Michael and the others that make the Forum possible.
I believe the Forum has become an integal part of the organisation and along with IWN, really is part of the lifeblood that keeps so many people interested and informed of the "goings-on" of the organisation.

Also during those long Winter evenings when many of us revert to "armchair boating" it provides lots of lively discussion and entertainment (Tks PJ ! ! )

Wishing all friends and aquaintances (reletives incl as well...! ! ) Good Health and Happiness in 2011
PS: I believe its not fashionable any more to wish for "prosperity" (But I will keep doing the Lotto anyhow...

I'm stunned! Did I really contribute 627 times over the last 11 years? Great! Keep it coming, to Irelands premier discussion forum, well done Michael. Happy New Year to all, Alun



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/01/2011 01:26 by alungoodall.

Well said Richard -

Many thanks to the Forum team for all your efforts - the result is great.

Beth
Aqualegia

Hmmm...only in 5th place...!! I'll have to make a special effort this year
to catch up with Froggie.

Happy New Year to all..!!

M(W&W)F

Well said Richard. Thanks to Michael for the wonderful work he does for the forum.
Did The Frog really post that many times?
Now what can I do to pass out Mick B.?

Cheers ,PJN

Just keep up your usual waffle PJ.....LOL.
BTW, who's "Mick B"...??

M(W&W)F