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Welcome to the pps-dtac mailing list!
Here are the user instructions and posting guidelines.
If you ever want to remove yourself from this mailing list,
you can send mail to Majordomo@ancar.org with the following
command in the body of your email message:
unsubscribe pps-dtac
If you ever need to get in contact with the owner of the list,(if you have trouble unsubscribing, or have questions about the
list itself) send email to owner-pps-dtac@ancar.org
This is the general rule for most mailing lists when you need
to contact a human.
Here's the general information for the list you've subscribed to,
in case you don't already have it:
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Before you do anything else BEFORE YOUR EYES START TO GLAZE -- please create
a file on your computer for listserv information and save a copy of this message
there. Print a copy to hang on your bulletin board or molder on your
desk until it disintegrates. . Sooner or later you're going to need to refer
back to EVERY SINGLE PARAGRAPH in this message. This message tells you how
to subscribe and unsubscribe, whom to write if you have trouble, and how to
share your thoughts with other subscribers.
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Thank you for subscribing to our mailing list for parents of Portland area Talented and Gifted (TAG) students. We hope that you will find information, friendship, and support for yourself and your family here. You may also wish to subscribe to OATAG-L the state discussion list sponsored by the Oregon Association for Talented and Gifted, or to one of the large national groups for TAG parents. More information and links to these is available at a website, "Links for Portland TAG parents" at
http://home.pacifier.com/~mdelacy/margaret/tag.htm
Before you start, be sure to read our posting guidelines, below.The Portland Public School District Talented and Gifted Advisory Committee (DTAC)
is a group of interested parents with the following goals:
1. To EDUCATE parents, teachers, administrators and all other interested persons about all aspects of TAG education.
2. To IDENTIFY parenting issues.
3. To ADVISE the school board, administration, staff and teachers of the
Portland Public Schools regarding TAG issues.
This listserv was established to help us reach those goals.
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REMINDERS and USEFUL TIPS
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Please remember the mission of the list when posting messages. There are many other opportunities online to discuss world events, the last elections, religion, leaf removal, and other "large" issues--please do not use this list for such discussions unless they are directly related to TAG issues or the goals listed above. Please stick to TAG issues, PPS issues that directly affect our TAG students. or topics you honestly believe are of interest to TAG families. There is another listserv, run by the Community and Parents for Public Schools of Portland for discussion of more generalPPS issues.
Please keep all your messages polite, supportive and helpful. Personal criticism or "flaming" of any sort is not welcome. It can get out of hand very quickly online. Please also remember that humor can be misunderstood.
We urge you to keep in mind that the people most affected by what you say are often your own children. Be very careful about sharing ANY personal information about your children.
Even though this message is quite long, we ask that you keep your own messages short. Don't copy the whole of a previous message but try just to indicate the subject and/or the most important sentence or two. Please respect the copyright laws and send links to websites and newspaper articles instead of copying the entire article.
Please remember to indicate the subject of your message in the
"subject" line. Sometimes people receive messages in
"digest" form. The subject heading for the collection of
messages just gives the digest number, and so when they reply, their own subject
heading will read "digest" unless they add a subject. Similarly, when
you "reply" to someone else's message, youwill avoid confusion if you
make sure that the person whose name is given as the author of the message
really wrote it.
It is better to seek advice in general terms than in specific terms. Remember that sometimes people make mistakes and anything you say online might be forwarded accidentally or on purpose to any neighbor, teacher, parent, or school that you identify. For example, "what steps could I take to handle harassment?" or "what is the PPS policy concerning harassment?" are fine, but "My daughter Miranda is a seventh-grade student at Tempest-Tossed Middle School and is being harassed by a strange-looking and odious student named John Caliban" might lead to anger--or worse--from Caliban's family.
When you first sign on, it is helpful to provide a brief introduction about yourself and your TAG interests. Other helpful ideas include bringing your sense of humor, posting thank-you's and updates to the list, signing every message, and sharing freely.
Before leaving town and especially before setting up any "autorespond" service on your computer, it is VERY IMPORTANT that you unsubscribe from the list or set the list to "NOMAIL" . This will prevent your autorespond from notifying all our subscribers that you are out of the office over and over and over and over..... Failure to do this will incur immediate removal from the list, and on your return you will have to grovel before the administrator. Even if your trip involved a country without extradition, we will track you down and expostulate.
To UNSUBSCRIBE, send the message "unsubscribe PPS-DTAC" to the listserv's computer address:
There are four important addresses associated with this list. First, there is a secretary who maintains the mailing list. In this case the secretary is a machine--the "listserv" address. You write to the secretary whenever you want to subscribe, unsubscribe, or otherwise execute some mindless command. That is the address you wrote to when you subscribed in the first place. It is
Second, there is an audience, consisting of all the list subscribers. To communicate with -all- of them in one swell foop, send your thoughts toThird, there is the automated information hotline. Like many other "tech support" services, it will send you the same list of instructions no matter what you send it. To retrieve a list of commands for making better use of the list, send a message (any message) to
Finally, there is the friendly list owner. As a LAST RESORT if you are having trouble managing your subscription yourself you can send a message to:and beg the owner to rescue you. HOWEVER.....Please try managing your own subscription first by using the first address. It's easy! Our list owner is donating his time, equipment and services--so please say "thank you" when you see him and try not to take up too much of his time with stuff you can do yourself.
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POSTING GUIDELINES
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Be sure your full name and correct e-mail address is included on every
message you send to the list. As not every e-mail program automatically
includes this information, please sign every message you post.
Please speak courteously and respectfully of and to all individuals and groups and remember that every child and every family is different. Racism, pornography and obscenity are always unacceptable.
Please do NOT send in commercial announcements or advertising of any sort.Also, do not share any individual's private information including phone number or address without permission from that person.
Portland is a very small place. Please do NOT forward ANYTHING *from* this list without specific permission from the author of the message unless it is clearly impersonal and intended to be shared. Impersonal messages include links to public websites, official announcements, links to published articles, or announcements of public events.
Please, please DO NOT send any attachments EVER. Many of the other subscribers won't be able to read them, and they often carry viruses and other "bad" programs. Similarly, send your messages as "plain vanilla" e-mail without fancy graphics, characters, colors, formatting etc. Thesereally confuse many e-mail programs. Please don't send photos, gif or jpeg files, data files, MIME attachments, or any message that will take a creaky old computer with a terrible modem and slow connection too long to download. Remember that many of us are using equipment that our third graders put together with Legos and old toasters. If your e-mail gives you a choice, send your messages as plain unformatted text without HTML or special characters. Do not send it as "both" or many recipients will see two copies of every message, one in strange characters. We have enough strange characters among our relatives already.
Please avoid chain letters, virus warnings, or any mail forwarded from any
source you do not know and trust. (To learn whether a virus warning
is a hoax, check with the Computer Incident Advisory Committee of the U.S.
Department of Commerce which offers a "hoaxbusters" site at
http://HoaxBusters.ciac.org/ .
To head off REAL viruses, we advise visiting the website of a reputable anti-virus software company such as Symantec,
which makes Norton anti-virus products, at http://www.symantec.com/ .BOOKMARK THESE SITES NOW! You will be glad you did.)
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MODERATION
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The listserv is "unmoderated." That means that there is no
editor who screens the messages that you send to the list. However, we do
have a process for removing subscribers who use the list inappropriately.
A communications committee, named annually at a public DTAC meeting, may
"unsubscribe" anyone who in the committee's sole judgment is
persisting in sending inappropriate messages to the list. This is done to
protect you, the subscribers, from being bothered by inappropriate messages.
In addition, this list has a "spam" filter to help reduce the number
of unwanted messages. The list owner regularly checks the filtered
messages to make sure that any pertinent information is resent to the list.
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Bounce messages: the listowner gets a copy of every single message that is bounced by your ISP whether it's a system problem at your end or a full mailbox. The following policy is currently in effect: Mail bounced for other than a transient error: SUBSCRIPTION IS DELETED Mail bounced for full mailbox: DELETE or NOMAIL, listowner's discretion LISTSERV (R) automatically processes many types of error messages and will delete your subscription if the problems continue for more than 4 days.
Rejected Postings. Your mail to the list will be rejected if your current e-mail address doesn't exactly match the one you subscribed under. Send a message to the listowner with both the old and new addresses to have this problem corrected. To prevent this problem from occurring and keep the listowner from turning you into a mouldiwarp, please UNSUBSCRIBE before you change your e-mail address and then RESUBSCRIBE from your new address. Maximum message length is currently 200 lines and each member is allocated up to 5 messages per day.
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