There is a new FFLA news email distribution system! This note describes how it works.

If you want to send a message to the entire FFLA membership, address your message to ff-la@YahooGroups.com. The message moderator (currently Carolee Lawrence) will get a notification that you sent a message. The message moderator then decides if the email is appropriate for the entire FFLA membership, and if it is, she approves it, and it is distributed. 

For example, if you receive an email about an upcoming FFLA potluck, do not respond to ff-la@YahooGroups.com but instead respond directly to the FFLA member who is requesting more information. That way everybody on the FFLA member list is not overwhelmed by many emails and the person requesting information immediately receives it. 

John Boland is to be thanked very much for laboriously entering FFLA members email addresses into the FFLA Yahoo Group database. If you change your email address, let John know as he is the address list moderator and only he (or as a back-up the message moderator Carolee or the webmaster Peter) can add email addresses to the list.

As a list member, you can read an archive of past messages (and other Group information) by going to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ff- la/, but only if you try to do so from the email address that John entered for you. Also, if you want to send a message to the Group, you must do so from the email address that John entered for you. That way only authorized people will be able to post or have access to Group messages.

If you want to send a message or respond only to an FFLA member, do not click on Reply or use ff-la@YahooGroups.com in any address field (which potentially goes to everybody) and instead just click Forward and address your note to that member. If you click on Reply, the message goes only to the list moderator (who will not approve distribution to the entire FFLA General Membership) and not to the intended recipient. 

The purpose of the FFLA news distribution system is to control and limit the number of emails received by FFLA members to only those which the list moderator believes are relevant to most people. In addition, your email addresses has been shielded from potential Spammers. And any previously posted messages are visible only to current FFLA members, so Club privacy is protected. Finally, we have an archive of all previously posted messages for future reference.

Peter Landecker, FFLA Webmaster, 9 April 2008