Hello and thank you for reading this message. We are delighted and honored with your interest in the local campaign in Durham North Carolina supporting the candidacy of Barack Obama for President of the United States of America.

We are a vibrant local group with a rapidly expanding email list. We would like to draw your attention and remind you of the consequence of using REPLY, and REPLY-ALL on group emails.

Please consider if your reply is appropriate to several hundred other people, or of your reply makes sense only to the author of the original message, or a specific set of people. Of course, if your reply is of general interest, please do send it to our group lists, but if it is not, please be selective with your target audience.

If your target audience does not need to be the entire list of "Durham County for Obama" members, please make a note of the FROM address (cut-and-paste is an option), then rather than selecting REPLY .... select FORWARD and then enter the explicit addresses that should receieve the email.

If you are concerned by the number of emails you receive from our Listserve (group email) please consider selecting a daily digest. This means that you will get ONE email per day, this one email will contain all of the messages over the previous 24 hours.

Please consider the following:

Although there are no "written laws" of the Internet, there is implied etiquette, or often referred to as netiquette.

When we send messages to individuals, or to a group or campaign Listserv, each of us should keep five main guidelines in mind.

(1.) If you send a message in all caps (UPPER CASE) it is assumed that the user sending the message is shouting. This can be offensive to the recipient.

(2.) Messages sent to a Listserv should pertain to the particular Listserv.

Users should not send personal messages, or messages that don't pertain to the group or campaign to the Listserv. Many people consider receiving a message that doesn't apply to them "junk" email. Most users find it annoying. This also adds to the congestion on the Internet.

(3.) Attachments should NOT be sent to Listservs unless the group is aware that the attachment is being sent.

Attachments are automatically placed on the hard drives of the recipient and are not necessarily deleted just by deleting the email message from the mail program. This can "clutter" users hard dives; Sending an attached file implies that the recipient has an application installed on their computer to open the file, which is not always the case; Some people check email at home via modem connection. Receiving an attachment via a modem can sometimes be very slow and an inconvenience. Lastly, viruses can be sent in attached files.

If you have attachments that may be appropriate for the group, please consider sending to webmaster@durhamforobama.org and we will create a downloadable version for our local interest group. We can add a note of size, and then the impact of download becomes a personal choice.

(4) When replying to a Listserv message, it is important that you direct your reply to the proper person or group of users you intend your response to go to.

When you simply reply to a Listserv message, the whole list will receive your reply. If the original message required you to reply to the list, or if you wished your comments to be seen by the list, then simply use the reply option. If you wish to reply to the originator of the message, make note of the email address of the sender and generate a new message to that user with your comments or reply. We all "goof" once in a while and sometimes we reply to the entire list by accident. When this happens, Listmembers should not exacerbate the problem by replying with a public reprimand to the person who posted in error. Listmembers who truly want to help new users to reply properly should themselves address those messages privately to the individual who misposted in the first place.

(5) When generating a reply, users should delete the original message, or just leave segments of the original message, which are being specifically replied to.

Also, please consider using the DIGEST option for group emails. If you select DIGEST you will get ONE email per day, with all of the group emails contained within it. This does cut down on personal email traffic, but also means you may not see a specific email message for almost 24 hours after it was sent.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact: webmaster@durhamforobama.org.

Join us now and experience the electrifying exhilaration of working together as WE, THE PEOPLE take America back!