Ph-assess -- Washington public health assessment coordinators

 

About Ph-assess
English (USA)

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PH-ASSESS User Guide:

Welcome to PH-ASSESS, our first electronic forum for exchange of ideas and
information regarding public health in Washington State! We hope that you
use this communication tool to its full benefit and potential. This User's
Guide is sent out to all new subscribers. In it we have attempted to
answer most of the questions that you might have about how to use
PH-ASSESS and a little bit about the structure of the group. We strongly
suggest that you read it through and then save it away for reference!
Here are the subjects that PH-ASSESS USER'S GUIDE covers... 1. History and
Purpose of PH-ASSESS 2. Addresses You Need to Know 3. This User's Guide 4.
Mail Options 5. Handling Mail Volume 6. PH-ASSESS Netiquette 7. Policy on
Surveys 8. Signatures 9. Why Does LISTSERV Reject my Commands? 10. The
PH-ASSESS Archives 11. Closing Comments
_____________________________________________________________

1. History and Purpose

PH-ASSESS was born from the WASALPHO-L project. The purpose of
PH-ASSESS is to provide an electronic forum for the exchange of
information and ideas of interest to assessment coordinators and public
health officials in Washington State. The initial subscribers to the list
include assessment coordinators and senior management of local public
health jurisdictions in Washington State and the State Department of
Health.

PH-ASSESS resides at the University of Washington and is
maintained by the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice. Although
this list is intended for use by Washington Public Health Assessment
Coordinators and other Washington public health offcials, this is an open
list, which means that anyone can subscribe.

Subscribers can modify their mail mode or unsubscribe at any time by
following the instructions below. However, the list manager can assist in
making any changes, or subscribing and unsubscribing. The list manager
can be reached at .

PLEASE SAVE THIS MESSAGE FOR FUTURE REFERENCE, especially if you are not
familiar with LISTPROC. This might look like a waste of disk space now,
but in 6 months you will be glad you saved this information when you
realize that you cannot remember what lists you are subscribed to, or what
is the command to leave the list to avoid filling up your mailbox while
you are on vacations. In fact, you should create a new mail folder for
subscription confirmation messages like this one, and for the "welcome
messages" from the list owners that you will occasionally receive after
subscribing to a new list.

2. Addresses You Need to Know -- Posting address for PH-ASSESS
is: . A message posted to this address will
be seen by all list subscribers. Hence, this is not the appropriate
address for requesting changes in mail options or with help in using
LISTPROC. Do NOT send List commands to the Posting address above because
people will get really mad at you!! Read on for the correct address for
List commands.

LISTPROC address: . This is the address to use
for automated LISTPROC commands such as putting your mail on hold,
changing from/to Digest mode, etc., as described in the sections below.
All messages to this address are handled by a program and are never seen
by a human, so any additional comments, etc. will go unheard.
This is obviously the preferred method for setting mail options,
unsubscribing, etc., (since you don't bother a person doing it). Do NOT
use the above address to post messages that are intended for the
subscribers to PH-ASSESS.

Help address: nwc@u.washington.edu Unlike with the LISTPROC address, a
message to this address goes to a human who will be able to help you with
your LISTPROC problems. She can handle cryptic messages like "SET
PH-ASSESS MAIL POSTPONE" but would much rather see normal, polite requests
in English.

3.This USER'S GUIDE
If you're reading this, you've already discovered one source for the
USER'S GUIDE. To keep yourself updated on changes to this document,
please stay tuned to the list. If you lose your copy or you hear that
there is an updated copy of this USER'S GUIDE, you can ask LISTPROC to
send you one simply by sending the command:
info ph-assess
to the LISTPROC address.

PH-ASSESS USER'S GUIDE is maintained by the Northwest Center for Public
Health Practice. All USER'S GUIDE-related questions and comments should go
directly to: nwc@u.washington.edu

4. Mail Options
LISTPROC gives you 4 mail options:
* * ACK (you get a copy of your own messages)
* * NOACK (you don't get a copy of your own messages)
* * POSTPONE (you get no mail, good for vacations and stuff)
* * DIGEST (a digest version of the day's messages)

To change your mail option you just need to send a command to the LISTPROC
address, such as:
SET PH-ASSESS MAIL POSTPONE
to put your mail on hold, or:

SET PH-ASSESS MAIL DIGEST
to switch from receiving every message to receiving a daily digest
version.

Type the command (and nothing else) in the body of a mail message and send
it to the LISTPROC address: and the LISTPROC
software will change your mail option. Note to DIGEST subscribers: Most
regular mail subscribers often rely on the subject line to decide if they
want to read a message or not. If you reply to a digest it will go to
the list but the subject line will probably read something like:
Re: PH-ASSESS Digest - August 1, 1996
which will make it difficult for people to figure out what your post is
about! Please change the subject line to the title of the post you're
replying to.

5. Handling Mail Volume
Here are some tips on dealing with the mail in each of the four message
modes.

ACK or NOACK: In both ACK and NOACK modes, you have no control over when
the messages are sent to your account. However, from there on, you can
choose appropriate ways to deal with your mail. If you are on your
computer all day and often receive work or other mail that has to be
checked more frequently than you want to check PH-ASSESS mail, it can get
cumbersome separating the list mail from your other mail. If this is
the case with you, you may wish to look at ways in which you can filter
out PH-ASSESS mail into a separate folder. Ask someone at your node about Elm
filters or procmail (usually available on Unix systems). Other ways to
handle this include simple self-discipline (although this hasn't worked for
anyone we know :-)) or a reordering of priorities to make PH-ASSESS reading as
important as your other work.

DIGEST: This will probably be the most popular mail option among PH-ASSESS
subscribers but in order to keep everybody's options open, we will keep
the default mail mode as NOACK. The advantage of this mode is that the
mail gets compiled into digests and sent to you just once daily. On
PH-ASSESS, the digest is sent out once a day at midnight. The obvious
disadvantages of this delivery method are 1. because you only have one big
message, it's hard to choose messages to read and to reply to specific
ones, 2. you can often miss out on discussion threads late in the day
because they may only appear in a digest issued the next day, and 3.
sometimes, because of the way LISTPROC mail is delivered, digests may be
delayed for a long time and may even appear out of sequence. There isn't
much you can do about 2) and 3) above as they are in the very nature of
digests. However, 1) can be fixed by using a digest splitter. Many
modern mail handling programs come with digest splitters (for instance,
the VM mailer that runs under Emacs has one). Check if the mailer that
you like to use has one.

6. PH-ASSESS Netiquette
Some basic etiquette should be observed when posting messages to this
list: Be careful when replying to messages. We have already seen the
original message once and we do not need to see it again in your reply.
Keep only the parts that remind us what you are replying to and snip the
rest. Keep in mind who you are talking to when you post. If what you are
saying is intended for only one or two people, it would be best if
sent through private e-mail.

This list was set up for sharing information and discussion of issues of
interest to assessment coordinators and related public health issues.
You can talk about anything you want, but please keep non-public health
related material to a minimum. Please feel free to express your opinion,
and be respectful of other's opinions as well.

7. PH-ASSESS Policy on Surveys
Please, NO PUBLIC FORUM SURVEYS.
Responses to surveys should be sent to a private e-mail address, and NOT
to PH-ASSESS list address. Survey replies directly to the list just
add unnecessary clutter and do not work well. You are welcome to conduct
surveys, just make sure that your mailer can put a "Reply To" line in your
message. Otherwise, contact the list manager (nwc@u.washington.edu)
before you post a survey or questionnaire of any sort. Then do not do it.

8. Signatures
A brief note about signatures: Left to their own whims mailers will not
always tell us who or where you are, so please be sure and include a few
lines at the bottom of your messages that tell us:
....Your Name
....Your Title and Place of Employment
....Your e-mail address

9. Why Does LISTPROC Reject my Commands? If LISTPROC tells you aren't
subscribed to the list when you try to send a LISTPROC command, the
problem is that the address LISTPROC is getting from your mail message is
different from the one you're subscribed under. A brief explanation of
the standard mail transfer protocol follows to help explain this. When a
mail message is sent out by your mailer, there is a sender address
associated with it that may or may not be the same as the address in the
From: line of the header of your message. This, and not the From:
address, is what LISTPROC uses to determine who you are. Usually, to
prevent mail forgery, your system administrator will not let you control
this sender address while you will usually be able to control the From:
address in the header. Possible explanations for why LISTPROC would reject
your LISTPROC commands include: 1. There may have been changes in the
configuration of your system that caused the sender address associated
with your mail to change. The way to fix such a problem is to simply ask
the list manager (by writing to nwc@u.washington.edu) to unsubscribe
you from your old address and then re-subscribe with your new address. 2.
If you are on a network of machines, all of which have their own network
address, the mailers on the network may be configured so that your address
looks different depending on which machine you are sending your message
from. In this case, you will be able to send LISTPROC commands only from
the machine from which you originally subscribed. If this is the case,
you may try to unsubscribe from wherever you are subscribed now and then
to subscribe from a machine that you are more likely to be on, so that you
can conveniently send LISTPROC commands. In any case, if you are having
problems with getting LISTPROC commands to work, please contact the
volunteers at the PH-ASSESS-request address and they will be able to help
you out.

10. The PH-ASSESS Archives
Contributions sent to this list are automatically archived. You can get
a list of the available archive files by sending the command:
INDEX PH-ASSESS
to: .

You can then order these files with the command
GET PH-ASSESS LOGxxxx or using LISTPROC's database search
facilities. Send the command:
INFO DATABASE for more information on the latter.

11. Closing Comments
Well, we hope this will give you a little head start at
making sense of PH-ASSESS. If you need *any* help with the list
or have any questions about LISTPROC or mail in general please contact
nwc@u.washington.edu.









To see the collection of prior postings to the list, visit the Ph-assess Archives.

Using Ph-assess
To post a message to all the list members, send email to ph-assess@u.washington.edu.

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