| We have one of the coolest tools the net has to offer, and ours has
been an overwhelming success. It's called a listserv. Our listserv is
hosted free of charge on America Online's server using L-Soft listserv
software. The name of the list is "Apert". The idea came from
Qing Gong (Vivi's mom) and we are very indebted to her for that! Your
list owner/editor is Don Sears.
Please feel free to notify me privately if you are having
problems with the list. For any of you who do not know what a listserv
is, here's a brief overview.
The purpose of the list is to allow us to quickly trade information,
through email -
questions, answers, news about individual surgeries coming up, surgical
or genetic breakthroughs, whatever! Our subscribers include adults with
Apert and other craniofacial anomalies, parents, physicians, therapists,
teachers, friends, and family. A listserv works with your email. Once you "subscribe"
you send mail to a special address, and it automagically gets
distributed to everyone else who is subscribed. If you are shy, you can
still subscribe and no one will know you are there until you participate
by sending mail to the list. This is called "lurking." You can
remove yourself from the list at any time. You can also choose to get
daily "digests" - a whole day's worth at one time - rather
than getting each individual letter as they are posted. Being a part of
the discussion list in no way changes your other email functions, that
is, you are still free to send private email to anyone you wish.
To join (subscribe), send an email to the following address:
listserv@listserv.aol.com
In the body of this letter, put the command:
SUBSCRIBE APERT Your Real Name
Send the letter. Very shortly, you will get a request back from
Listserv asking you to confirm your request. This is to make sure
Listserv has captured your mailing address correctly. If you are
operating behind a firewall at work, or for some other mail servers,
this may not work. That's ok - I'll just have to add you manually. Send
a note to me at catndon@apert.org
and let me know what problems you are having.
Once you are successfully subscribed, you send mail to the group by
sending regular old email to the following address:
apert@listserv.aol.com
As a favor to the group, the first letter you send should include a
short introduction of yourself. That's all there is to it!
Should you ever decide to leave the group, you can cancel your
subscription by sending the command "SIGNOFF APERT" to the
listserv@listserv.aol.com address. All COMMANDS are sent to that
address; all MAIL is sent to the apert@listserv.aol.com address. Other
commands and instructions for them can be obtained by sending the
command HELP to the command address.
One very useful command is the SET DIGESTS command. If you don't want
to get an average of 25 - 30 messages per day from Apert, you can send
the command SET APERT DIGESTS and you will get one message
per day which will rolls all of the individual messages into one. If you
want to go back to individual postings you just send SET APERT NODIGESTS
and then you'll begin getting each message.
This discussion list provides us all with a quick way to share
information. The web page is great, and the list does not replace it -
but it enhances our communication by allowing us to trade
information quickly and efficiently!
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