The members section of this website is a secure area (you need an ID and password to use it) that contains a number of interactive features to facilitate the exchange of information among participants. Members can:

1. Update their own personal information, and decide how much of that information to make visible to other members. Members can also choose which fetures they wish to participate in.
2. Browse an archive of previous mailing list posts. Members can also compose and contribute their own messages to the mailing list. In most cases, mailing list submissions are held for appoval by a site administrator before they are emailed to the membership. General guidelines for message appropriateness are applied (see Members Area Acceptable Use Policy for more information.)
3. Participate in an online forum, in which members can create discussion threads, and contribute responses to existing threads. As with the mailing list, submissions are held for approval by a site administrator. We make every effort to approve posts within 24 hours at the outside.
4. Members can send direct emails to another member without needing to know that recipient's email address. Note that email addresses are not displayed through this function, and members can, through their personal settings, choose to opt out of this feature; their name would not be displayed in the recipient list.
5. Participate in an online Transition Guelph Wiki, create and update pages, add information, clarify or correct existing information, and browse existing pages.
6. Participate in the Transition Guelph Village Toolbox resource page, send emails, post picture and information, and customize their membership (Note that this is a separate website). NOTE that both the Village Toolbox pages and the Wiki are linked from the members area, but are open access and do not require a login. If you bookmark either of these sites, you should be able to go directly to them without signing on.
7. View a membership list. Note that this list displays only the information each member has chosen to make available.
8. View posted meeting notes. At the moment, this particular feature does not at this time require a login to view, but if the membership indicates a preference that this section come under the secure area as well, this can be changed.

You can update your personal information, reset your password, and customize your online experience through this page. When you first create your ID through the login page, the only information that is required is an email address--which becomes your login ID--and a password. If your membership was created automatically through the Transition Guelph mailing list, your initial login ID and password will both be set your email address. To make your membership access more secure, we recommend you change your password to something else. Using the checkboxes at the bottom of this page, you can select which features you wish to participate in, and also what information you want to make available to other members.

NOTE: In order to participate in most of the online features, you will also need to provide your name. As you provide information on this form, the relevant checkboxes at the bottom of this page will become available. For example, to unlock any of the checkboxes, you first have to provide your name. If you then type in an alternate email address, the checkbox to allow your alternate email address to be visible gets unlocked, and so on.

You can change any of your personal information at any time, including your login ID, should your email address change. You can change your password at any time too (note that to verify your password, you must enter it the same in both password fields.)

To unsubscribe from the members forum, send an email from your login email ID to admin@transitionguelph.org with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line.

This feature allows you to browse an archive of previous mailing list posts, and also compose and contribute your own messages to the mailing list. In addition, you can create your own mailing lists that can contain a subset of the entire membership, in order to send targeted messages to a specific group of recipients. Please note, however, that at this time you cannot populate the mailing lists you create with members yourself, since it seems more appropriate for the members themselves to have the choice to opt into our out of a given list. We're still working out the best way of doing this, perhaps by targeted and/or general invitations.

In most cases, mailing list submissions are held for appoval by a site administrator before they are emailed to the membership. This is to ensure that emails sent to our members are appropriate, on-topic and do not contain objectionable material. We make every effort to approve a posting within 24 hours. Posting acceptability guidelines are detailed in the Members Area Acceptable Use Policy.

This feature allows you to participate in an online forum, in which members can create discussion threads, contribute responses to existing threads and browse existing threads and responses. You can create a new thread by clicking the button at the bottom of the main forum page. To select a thread for viewing, simply click on the subject heading in the list. Once you are in a thread, you can contribute your own posting to that thread simply by typing it into the text area at the bottom of the page. Please note that most submissions are held for approval by a site administrator before they are posted. This is to ensure that postings sent to our members are appropriate and on-topic and do not contain objectionable material. We make every effort to approve a posting within 24 hours. Posting acceptability guidelines are detailed in the Members Area Acceptable Use Policy.

Each posting in a thread list has two buttons at the upper right. The button that looks like an exclamation point opens a window that allows you to report a post that you feel is inappropriate for any reason (see the Members Area Acceptable Use Policy for guidelines). The other button allows you to quote that post in your reply. It is not necessary to do this simply to contribute to the thread, but it is available should you wish to reply or add to a specific point made in one of the postings.

This feature allows you to exchange messages with other members who have opted into this feature. You do not need to know the recipient's email address or other information, just their name. Email addresses are not posted or revealed, to protect the privacy of our members. At the moment, only one message can be sent at a time, but eventually users will have the ability to create recipient lists to send messages to groups of users.

On the main Message Centre page is a list of all your messages. You can click on the "Unread" button to limit the display to only messages you have not yet viewed. Unread messages are highlighted. You can also click on "Sent Msgs" to view messages you have sent to other members. To display the complete list of received messages, click All.

To view the contents of a message, simply click on it. This takes you to a screen that displays the entire message, and also allows you to send a reply.

To create and send a new message, click on the "Send a Message" button. On the following screen, select the desired recipient from the dropdown list, enter a subject heading and your message, then click Send.

A Wiki is a page or collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community online resources, as in this case. It is a separate entity and has its own help pages and online tutorial.

The Village Toolbox is a web tool that enables communities to share information, photo galleries, mailing lists and other online features. It is a separate entity from the Transition Guelph website and has its own help information.

This feature displays a list of Transition Guelph members who have chosen to make their information available. Note that by going to the "Update My Personal Information" page, you can choose whether or not your name will appear in this list, and if so, which other information will be displayed. You can individually turn on or off the display of your primary email address, secondary email address, contact information (street address, phone numbers) and description.

Simply stated, our policy concerning the personal information of our members is this: We will make every effort possible to protect the privacy of our members, and to keep the information provided to us by our members strictly confidential. We do not display member email addresses on our web pages where they can be harvested by Spam-bots, and we will never pass on any member information to a third party (Note that the Transition Guelph Members Directory page is generated dynamically from the members database, therefore the information it displays is not static and thus not visible to "web crawler" processes that attempt to harvest personal information for spam sites.) In other words, we will never sell, give out, publish, disseminate, or otherwise make available any information about our membership, under any circumstances. Period.

The Members area of Transition Guelph is an interactive feature intended to facilitate discussion and the free exchange of ideas and information among our membership. It allows users to post messages to an online forum and to reply to forum messages posted by other members, exchange emails directly through the website, send emails to all subscribing members through an email distribution list, and access the Transition Guelph Wiki and Village Toolbox websites (NOTE: all of these items have their own help information elsewhere in this document.) Material posted or distributed through any of these features must conform to policy guidelines for acceptability and appropriateness.

In general, posted or distributed material must relate in some way to the purpose or mandate of the Transition Guelph Initiative, i.e. it should be related in some way to the objectives of the Transition Town movement. Content may discuss topics such as (but not limited to) sustainability, localization, self-sufficiency, community resilience, community awareness, permaculture, climate change, peak oil, ecological footprint reduction, environmental protection, food security, water security, land stewardship, other transition initiatives, other related organizations, and similar topics.

Any material posted to the Transition Guelph site or emailed to its members that is determined to be spam will be removed from the site and the posting account will be revoked immediately!

Material posted does not necessarily have to be verifiable in terms of its accuracy or objective truth; we encourage users to express their opinions. However users must not knowingly publish information that they know to be untrue and falsely represent it as fact. Also, users may not publish any material that could be considered libelous or defamatory under Canadian law, or any material that encourages hatred, ridicule or discrimination against an individual, group, or organization.

Any such material will be removed from the site immediately, and users who violate this policy may have their membership suspended, or permanently revoked.

Once you have submitted ten posts (either forum or mailing list posts) that have been approved by an administrator (and no rejected posts) you will then be pre-approved for your all your further postings, i.e. they will post immediately, rather than being held for approval.

You aren't obliged to give your name if you don't feel comfortable doing so. However, all of the interactive features of the website--such as the Message Center, the Members' Forum, etc.-- are based on the member's name. This is done to protect the privacy of our members by concealing their email addresses. But this means that each name in our member's list has to be unique, so that each member is identifiable. If there are four members, all going by the name "Mary" in the database, how would you know which Mary is the one you want to contact? Therefore, it's helpful to us if you provide two names. They don't necessarily have to be your given name and last name, they could be your first and middle names, if you prefer, or perhaps your first name and a nickname. Just as long as they help to make your name entry unique.

There's another reason why two names is a good idea: often, Spam-bots (automated programs that scan the web looking for mailing list signups) will sometimes attempt to insert a bogus entry into a mailing list in the hopes of using it to acquiring some legitimate email addresses that they can add to their spam list. When they do this, they will often put an entry in like "Incenealk" in the name field, and "efficaguigh@gmail.com" in the email address (this is an actual entry I found in our mailing list). As you can see, it's just one name, and a gibberish one at that. So, periodically I will run a process that scans our mailing list, looking for potential spam email entries (so that I can delete them) and one of the things it looks for is single names in the name field. So, this is another reason why putting two names is a good idea, so that your entry doesn't trigger this detection unnecessarily.

Thanks!

These options allow you to select the kinds of emails you will receive from Transition Guelph. We want to be able to keep our membership informed and "in the loop", so to speak, but we don't want to bombard people with stuff they don't want. So here, you can choose! The ones we recommend you keep have been pre-selected for you, but you can make your own decisions.

Newsletters: Pretty straightforward. By choosing this option, you will receive our periodic Transition Guelph newsletter. It comes out, on average, once a month, give or take. If you choose this option, you should also choose the format you would like it in, either PDF or plain text (this selection is below the Email Preferences section.)
Public meeting notices: Again, this is pretty straightforward. You will receive brief notifications of upcoming general meetings, when and where.
Special event notices: Whenever Transition Guelph hosts an event, a film-screening, a public talk, an information day, and so forth, you will be sent a detailed email about the event. (Note that this is different from the "Keep me notified" option that appears further down the page. That option is for automatic notifications whenever a new event is posted to the website. The option here is for special email invitations and detailed notices.)
Urgent messages: We recommend you keep at least this option. It will be used only for urgent emails.
Volunteer info specific to me: If you have volunteered for a working group, this selection will allow you to receive emails relating to that specific group. Obviously, if you are volunteering, this would be a good option to select.
All volunteer info: If you choose this option, it will allow you to receive emails that are directed to volunteers in working groups other than your own, if any.
Working group meeting notices: If you are in a working group, and you have chosen the "Volunteer info specific to me" option, you will already be receiving email notifications of your own working group meetings. However, if you also want to receive notices of other working group meetings, select this option.
General messages: This is for any other relatively low-priority notices that we may send out from time to time.