JUST MY OPINION... I am not really in favor of leaving someone a favorable comment simply because they followed through in sending an SASBE in order to get seeds. To me, it's like praising someone for coming to the dinner table and eating my food. And if we leave positive feedback for those who send out their SASBE requests, then shouldn't it follow that we leave negative feedback for someone who doesn't follow through? If that was the case, I'd be leaving negative feedback for dozens of people, as I'm sure anyone who has offered seeds for SASBE would as well. Though it's frustrating to hold seeds for someone who doesn't follow through, I don't really think it's an important enough of a matter to leave negative comments over. The whole concept of posting comments regarding SASBEs has other drawbacks. Last spring I offered a lot of seeds for SASBE, and one in particular stuck out. When I had looked at the person's want list, I saw she was looking for hardy geraniums. I found a few odds and ends, small amounts of several varieties, so I packaged them separately and included them as well thinking she'd be happy with the additional surpise. I was quite taken aback when she emailed me after receiving the SASBE and told me that I needed to read the FAQs, that "10 or 12 seeds was not considered a sufficient amount of seeds" and she would be leaving me negative feedback. I was stunned. Fortunately for her, she didn't leave the comments, or I would have responded with words including "ignorant", "selfish", and "ungrateful"... (Can you tell I'm still a tad steamed, LOL...) I think the sample comments for negative reviews are very good ones--Jack Webb of Dragnet would be happy with the "Just the facts, Maam" attitude. However, there are a few gray areas I am wondering about. What do you suggest regarding feedback if the trader sends mismarked seeds (ie, agastache instead of lavender); unviable seeds (such as sunflower seeds that were flat, white, and bendy, obviously underdeveloped); or a trader who waits until he/she has received the other person's seeds to tell them that he/she is out of several of the seeds they wanted and that they need to pick substitutes. I've always handled these matters privately. I know honest mistakes happen as in the first two cases--but the third example has happened to me a few times now (twice with the same trader--not going to trade with her again) and is starting to bother me as I feel it may be a bait and switch tactic. Still I'm not sure I'm comfortable about leaving negative feedback even in that situation. I'm sure it sounds as though I am focusing on the bad side of trading/SASBEs, which I am, but it's only because good trades and positive feedback are pretty self-evident. Kate

There are as many reasons for not "being in cyberspace" as there are people. I could hardly be described as a Luddite yet I despise most email newsletters. I worked in tech support, and have a tech degree, and 2 professional computer certifications. Still I prefer my editor's exchange newsletters to be hard copy. Why? because your average rose society email newsletter is poorly done. Creating a computer file for a paper publication is very different from creating a computer file for a cyber publication, and the latter is not a skill that's been very necessary until recently. One major assumption people make is that everyone either has broadband internet at home, or can use their work email to receive personal email. These are not valid assumptions! But they go on to make email newsletters with ginormous file sizes because they want to include color photos. But, they don't seem to know how to compress those photos first, or to know when a photo really is unnecessary. Really, do we need to see yet another color photo of someone's Peace rose? we all know what it looks like by now! So I end up receiving newsletters that take 15 minutes (no exaggeration here) to download, and for what?? nothing much. One local society newsletter includes a color photo of each article's and column's author!!!!! boy, does that clog up the pipeline. It's nice to be able to put a face to the name, but at least make it a thumbnail so it downloads faster! we don't need a lot of resolution for that. File type compatibility is an issue few understand, too, as Mad Gallica stated above. Not everyone has the Windows version of Office. There are very good reasons for people to use other software, and email distributors have to understand that they can't expect everyone to have one particular brand of software. We have members who do not own a computer and who are retired. They're not going to be able to get a newsletter by email, period. I'm not willing to cut them off, especially when they've been very very active members for decades. Another assumption is that people are getting these emails. Some of the major webmail providers that lots of people use, do not accept mass emails, or have file size limitations on individual mailboxes so that emails with large attachments simply disappear without arriving, or have overly aggressive spam filtering that deletes legitimate emails, or just simply are unreliable. No email service is 100% reliable. The USPS is much more reliable, overall. We tried once sending our newsletter by email but it just wouldn't go to aol or yahoo addresses, and that was half our list. Our board has had email discussions before, but when people don't reply, you have to wonder if they didn't get the emails, which is a very real possibility. Age is not really a factor in computer literacy here, we have older members who are extremely computer literate, but I know as you go farther into the hinterlands, away from centers of high-tech employment, the age of computer competency drops. It's always this way with any technological shift. The kids are learning it in grade school, but personal computers didn't even exist when I was in school. We have a website, but it doesn't get a whole lot of traffic. Older people, who are more likely to be obsessed with roses, are less likely to think, 'Let's see if it's online!' But I think it's important to have one. It lets people find us for one, and it has a LOT of local cultural information on it that people can look up anytime, and it has our schedule and a map to our meetings and our show. Remember that the average age of posters on this forum is only 48, and I know that the bottom age group for members in our local society is basically mid forties. Jerijen: THANK YOU for your comments on reposting other people's work. The same goes, I might add, for republishing other's work in your own newsletter, without even attribution. One side effect of emailing newsletters is it makes it that much easier for your work to be lifted and republished without permission, just like anything posted on the Web. I've always figured that so long as people attribute properly I don't need them to ask permission first, it's not like this is commercial property here, but I have one regular writer who would rather people ask first before reprinting his stuff. Now: I wrote an article on how to make a good email newsletter, and it's been posted on the ARS website, and it's MY work so I can go ahead and post the link. Unfortunately it's hard to find so I don't think many people are going to see it otherwise. I won't bore you all by posting the whole thing here, those who want it can follow the link. Caution: it was posted in Word (.doc) format, rather than HTML or PDF. Here's something I've done before, and had work: save the file to your desktop, then change the file extension to a file type your computer CAN open, ie change .doc to .rtf or .txt. It'll look screwy because the formatting is lost but it should be readable.

Corrine has already set up your own post for you over at LzD so you can just jump in there and start to work she has your first set of instructions up for you. Here is the link to your thread there Topic for Brownthumbia! Just use the login info that was sent to your email and you are good to go.

I like the Software running the forum, I find it Fantastic. I do. -- Someone in their estimation decided Not to give to forum users many of the options that are given to them in other forum Software. E.g. to quote each other in subsequent posts by clicking on "quote", to post twice with no barriers to doing so, to use spaces to express meaning (all extra spaces get deleted, and extra carriage returns too, so you cannot easily add extra interline spacing), to post without reading & reviewing one's own post first, to know how many "times read", how many people have clicked on a thread. Between now and the 22nd Century, human society might begin to choose what is ultimately useless information, like how many people have clicked on the thread since it was first created. Let's understand that we don't need to know that level of detail. What we really want to know is whether the thread is worth reading and that depends on concepts and quality of contributors' input: these two things can be tracked on the side -- and eventually included as a tool in a far future version of this forum. I'm assuming you are prepared to look into the future. There are some irritants but they are of little importance. E.g. CAPS in subject line get bounced to lower-case. It is easy to program into the software a few text management constraints that then surprise You and some others, but that ultimately are a Good Thing to work around and to accept as a good thing instead of thinking that you ought to have more and more options like text formatting. I personally vote in favor of programming that brings us all back to basic text, so all use of Upper Case IN ENTIRE WORDS be converted into lower case so that upper case only be available for word-initial use. Don't love the search function here... the way it's date-oblivious and doesn't allow you to select a date-RANGE. Hits for a particular keyword brings up a thread from 5 YEARS ago, followed by one from 5 DAYS ago, followed by one from 5 MONTHS ago, etc... But workarounds are easy, and in the future an access tool would get around it easily. Let's discuss bigger things: what would be useful to help you track the things you want to track and to find the information you want and to call upon the right community (people) when you need them and to be relatively sure that your requests are well received -- this would be a tool for which I would pay to have special access.