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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Membership
Joining the Network
Editing My Profile
Unsubscribing
Participating in the Mailgroup
Moderated Postings
Posting Queries and Responses
Retrieving Consolidated Replies and Message Threads
Submitting an Announcement or Update
Participating Anonymously
Mailgroup Netiquette
Protecting Privacy and Respecting Intellectual Property
Keeping Personal Information Private
Preventing E-mails from Being Given to Other Mailing Lists
Getting Credit for Contributions
Membership
Joining the Network
To join the Tribal Empowerment Network, you need to click on the “Sign up” link on the right on the Homepage. You will go to a new page that asks you for your e-mail, and then opens up the Sign-up Form. Complete all the required fields in the sign-up form, make sure you read and accept the Membership Agreement, and click on “submit”.
The form you fill is sent to the Moderator, who will contact you by phone or e-mail, normally within 3-4 days. The Moderator will find out more about your interests and answer any questions you may have. He/she will then subscribe you to the mailgroup, and you will automatically receive a “Welcome message” with some basic information and a password to access the Network’s member-only features (such as the message archives).
Editing My Profile
Your member profile was created from the information you provided in the Sign up form. To edit your member profile, first sign in from the Homepage using the password that was provided to you. If you cannot remember your password, use the link on the page to get a new one. Once logged in, you will go to a page where you can access your member profile. You can edit you member profile and update it according to your status. You can also change your password.
Unsubscribing
We do not have an automatic “unsubscribe” facility, because we prefer to understand why you want to leave so that we can serve our members better. In case you wish to unsubscribe, just email us at the Network address [network@trrc-ten.org] or to the moderator [moderator@trrc-ten.org]. You can simply state, “unsubscribe”, but we encourage you to briefly state your reason. Within a day of sending the email, you will be removed from the mailgroup.
Participating in the Mailgroup
Moderated Postings
The Tribal Empowerment Network’s mailgroup is moderated; i.e., all messages intended for the mailgroup are first directed to the Resource Person, as the Network’s mailgroup Moderator. The Moderator is a professional in the area of tribal development and a skilled e-mail communicator, and will ensure that the message is clear and appropriate for dissemination to the community. For example, the Moderator can block messages sent in error or offensive messages, generate a translation, or work with the sender to improve the phrasing of a query so that it generates a good response. Once the Moderator approves the message, it gets sent to the whole mailgroup.
All messages posted to the Network fall into one of the following categories. The Moderator will include the appropriate label in the subject line:
- QUERY: A request for solutions or information by a Community member – comparative experiences, examples, advice, or recommended consultants. The Query is 'open' for responses for approximately ten days. Responses to queries will be labeled “RE: Query:”
- CONSOLIDATED REPLY: After a Query is “closed”, the Moderator consolidates all responses into one message as the Consolidated Reply. The Consolidated Reply contains a summary of the responses and in many cases additional research from a desk search of relevant material on the web, past Queries or other sources. The Consolidated Reply may serve as a future topical reference.
- DISCUSSION: An e-Discussion launched with formal 'discussion questions' generally by a 'guest expert moderator' spread over a number of weeks. An e-Discussion can contribute to formulating a Community knowledge product, such as a ‘lessons learned’ paper, or it can be a ‘brainstorming’ to collect ideas for a programme or initiative.
- FOR COMMENTS: Draft papers that network members are asked to review and comment upon, such as a peer review of a project proposal.
- FOR INFO: Announcements from Community members of potential interest to members, such as new reports, upcoming events, timely calls for papers etc., and “News Updates” from the Moderator with periodic summaries of Community activity.
Queries: Members normally submit queries to their Network colleagues through e-mail, sending them to the Network’s e-mail address or directly to the Moderator. Either way, the Moderator will receive your question and inform you about when it would be posted to the Network, or perhaps help you reframe it so that it is clearer and more likely to get the replies you are hoping for (to learn more refer to the Rules of Participation in the Membership Agreement). Once you are both satisfied with the query contents, the moderator “approves” it and it is posted on the Network’s mailgroup. Only Network members who are subscribed to the mailgroup can participate in Network interactions. If you are not a member, you cannot send queries or access the discussion threads.
Responses: When a query comes into your e-mail mailbox and you want to respond, simply hit the “reply” button. The message is first received by the Moderator, who will then “approve” it and post it on the Network’s mailgroup. Before posting it, the Moderator may contact you in case the message needs editing to conform to the rules that contributors should follow (to learn more refer to the Rules of Participation in the Membership Agreement). Sometimes, you may find your message combined with others into one “Multiple Contributors” message. This is done at the Moderator’s discretion, mainly to cut down on the numbers of individual e-mails posted to avoid “e-mail overload”. Even though your message may be combined with others, it will always feature on its own in the corresponding “Consolidated Reply”.
Web-based mail: Members who prefer working off the web or who may not always have access to their e-mail programme have the option of sending messages from Tribal Empowerment Network’s web-based e-mail application. The message is received as an e-mail and its approval follows the same process as a message sent via e-mail. Log in to your Member page and click on “read messages”. Click on the tab “new topic,” to submit a query, or “post reply” to submit a reply to an ongoing thread. Use the template provided to e-mail a message, which will be received by the Moderator for action.
Retrieving Consolidated Replies and Message Threads
The complete set of Network Queries, Responses and Consolidated Replies, as well as Updates, are posted on our Web-based e-mail application that members can access using their email ID and password. Once you have logged in, click on the “read messages” to view the web-based message threads. Non-members can only view the public versions of Consolidated Replies (email IDs of members are removed) by going to the Consolidated Replies tab. Non-members are unable to view individual message archives.
Submitting an Announcement or Update
The “Network Update” within the “Tribal Empowerment Network” on the right is where Network members can find out what is happening in their Network. Members can post announcements for the attention of members. This section provides current information on events, job opportunities, partnering opportunities, etc. Messages stay on the site for two weeks, or until the deadline for an event. They are also compiled into an e-mail every two weeks, and circulated to members as an e-mail “Network Update”. If you would like to include an item in this section, click on the option “Feedback” and follow the instructions to complete the e-mail message form. Alternately, you can also e-mail the material directly to the Moderator. The Moderator will receive your message and upload the material on the website.
Participating Anonymously
We allow members to post or respond to queries anonymously. If for any reason you do not want your name included in a query or a response, simply tell the Moderator and the message will be posted as an “anonymous” contribution.
Mailgroup Netiquette
When sending a message to your colleagues through the mailgroup please use the following guidelines:
- Make your message concise, thought-provoking and to the point. Don't send contributions longer than a page.
- The first sentence of your message should summarize the content of your contribution or should reference the discussion to which you are referring.
- Do not raise new issues for discussion while contributing to a discussion or responding to a query. This can result in fragmentation of the discussion. New queries or discussion issues should be sent in a new separate message.
- If you provide a lengthy attachment, please send it as a zip file. Many members use dial-in lines and find it inconvenient to download large files.
- Include your name, office and location at the end, to make it easy for other members to know who you are.
- Include in subject heading the name of the state the Query is about, and a descriptive title relating to the issue being raised or the discussion to which it refers. A descriptive subject heading that clearly identifies the content of discussion will help other members to determine quickly whether a message is of interest to them.
- Do a search of the Consolidated Replies stored on the website. You might find that your query has already been covered in a previous exchange. All past queries are available in the web based mailgroup forum (see below).
- After receiving the Consolidated Reply to your Query, don’t hesitate to spend 5 to 10 minutes to send a short thank you directly to everyone that contributed.
- Keep the same subject heading, to ensure your message stays in the thread connected to the original Query.
- Send a response that may not be of interest to the entire community directly to the e-mail address of the person sending the Query, instead of using the “reply” function (which will direct your message to the whole mailgroup).
Protecting Privacy and Respecting Intellectual Property
Tribal Empowerment Network’s Privacy Policy is designed to encourage members to share contact information but to keep any contact information hidden from the public. Only logged in members can access contact information (e-mails, phone numbers and addresses). Non-members only have access to the public member list that only includes members’ name, organization, organization type, and location. We also have two versions of our Consolidated Replies – the ones circulated to members included links to member’s e-mail addresses, but the ones published in the public repository (the website search facility) have all member e-mails removed. The Privacy Policy states that you can (upon request) keep all personal information hidden not only from publicly available sites but also from other Network members. If you prefer not to reveal your email id, gender, and/or contact information, we will leave it out of our mail lists.
Preventing E-mails from Being Given to Other Mailing Lists
Members who “harvest” the names on our member list to post unsolicited messages are contravening the Membership Agreement, and their subscriptions are cancelled. If you find a member doing this, please report it to the Moderator.
Getting Credit for Contributions
In order to ensure that contributors are sufficiently recognized for their ideas and innovations, Tribal Empowerment Network has a “Creative Commons” license. Creative Commons offers a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors and artists, building upon the "all rights reserved" of traditional copyright to create a voluntary "some rights reserved" copyright. This form of licensing, used by “Open Content” advocates worldwide, allows authors and artists to determine the terms and conditions for sharing their intellectual property. For more information on the Creative Commons concept, visit their site at http://creativecommons.org. The Creative Commons license for Tribal Empowerment Network is “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5”. This license lets others build upon your work, except for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. All new works based on yours will carry the same license. This simply means that if you got an idea or material from Tribal Empowerment Network, you should give the original contributor credit, and if you further develop this idea or material, you should return the favor and post it on Tribal Empowerment Network as well. "Non-commercial" means that you can use the work for non-profit purposes only, unless you get permission from Tribal Empowerment Network and the original contributor. An Open Content model means that instead of profiting from the sale of your work, you profit from the fact that your name stays associated with the work. An Open Content approach is also in keeping with the spirit of Tribal Empowerment Network – by sharing rather than protecting your intellectual property, you are widening the field of professional peers who give recognition to your ideas, thereby enhancing your status and reputation. A Creative Commons License is a legally binding copyright instrument, and ensures that members are always duly credited for their contributions. If you find that a contribution or resource you provided to Tribal Empowerment Network shows up on another site or have been used by another person without acknowledgement, please inform your Moderator, and we will take it up.
