The Dallas Trees Discussion Group is open to all. Admittance into the group is free. The procedures listed below are geared to help you get started. We encourage your interaction that is both civil and for the benefit of the community. You may be discussing items with local Dallas-ites or friends from around the world. This discussion group is in no way affiliated with the City of Dallas or any other local or regional government influence. Enjoy.

Dallas Trees

1) The Dallas Trees discussion list is hosted by Google Groups.  The name of the list is Dallas Trees.  The group was originated by Philip Erwin, a certified arborist in the Dallas, Texas area. It was slowly formed together beginning in January, and over several months, so all discussions do not start until about March.

2) To join the Dallas Trees Discussion List go to the website http://groups.google.com/group/dallastrees?lnk=li and join in on the discussions.  If you do not already have a Google account , you will first need to create one.  The instructions for creating a username and password are pretty self-explanatory.  Whether you previously had a Google account or not, in a few minutes you will receive a message from Google, at the email address you provided, asking you to confirm your registration. You will need to respond to this message, following the instructions in the email, to confirm your email address and to activate your account and membership in the Dallas Trees Group.

3) You may choose one of three ways to receive the discussions: a) copies of each email posted to the list sent individually to your email address, b) a daily digest sent to your email address, or c) participation via the web only. In the first option every email posted to the discussion list is mailed individually to your listed email address. Any attachments to the emails are also forwarded. In digest form the messages for each day are compiled and sent as an individual post to your email address. Be sure to add dallastrees@googlegroups.com to your safe list for any spam filters protecting your email account. You may choose to not have any messages sent to you and view the messages from the list website only.  These options may be chosen from the "Edit my Membership" page of the list.

4) Emails may be sent by members using any email program or by posting directly from the discussion list. To post a message you must be a member of the list. When using an external email program, the message must be sent the email address listed in your account. Members may create pages or upload files to share with the group to the Dallas Trees list.  Go to the list home page http://groups.google.com/group/dallastrees?lnk=li and follow the directions to create pages or upload files. Because of space limitations large posts may be archived to the website and deleted from the list after a reasonable period of time.

5) When you join Dallas Trees you also have the option of creating a member profile.  This profile can include a nickname, information about your location, a quote, or a bit of a biographical sketch.  This is optional, but members are encouraged to create a profile. 

6) When posting messages be sure to include a subject line in the message.  When changing the topic of a thread it is appreciated if the subject line is change to reflect the change in subject. Messages without subject lines may be filtered by some firewall or anti-spam programs and will not be received by all list subscribers.

7) When posting messages address the message to Dallas Trees or to some individual. Messages that do not include a salutation may be filtered by some firewall or anti-spam programs and will not be received by all list subscribers.  Include a Salutation, such as Hello, Dallas Trees, Phil, or whatever.

8) When you "reply" to a message or a message thread, you end up putting multiple copies of every message in the thread back on the list, doubling and quadrupling the volume of messages the rest of us have to wade through.  If you are replying to someone's message, please delete everything except the relevant lines from the original message. Everyone will already have received a copy of the complete message. By using the default setting which attaches a complete copy of the original message to the reply, bombarding everyone with multiple instances of the same message.

9) On Google the messages are threaded. That means the messages that have the same subject heading are put together sequentially in a single thread. So long as the subject remains the same all of the posts and replies are grouped together. Dallas Trees members should take advantage of this feature of Google. If you change the subject heading then the thread is broken and this post and replies to this post will no longer be grouped with the others. When you start a new thread, post a meaningful description in the subject heading. Posts with subjects like "Back to George" are not particularly helpful. When replying to the same thread, members should not change the subject heading unless they are also changing the subject of the post. If you change subjects in a thread, chose a new descriptive subject heading. 

10) Shouting is discouraged.  Shouting is the practice of sending emails containing large blocks of capitalized, bold face, or large font text within the body of the message.  Using these formats makes the text more difficult to read and in general is considered to be rude when directed at an individual or the group as a whole.  The discussion list is not moderated and politeness is expected of all participants. 

11) It is easy to reply to emails by just hitting the reply button on your email software.  One word of caution however, if you auto reply to a message sent on the forum your reply will be posted to EVERYONE on the forum.  It is a minor inconvenience for those of us who receive and the reply, but it can be disastrous for the person sending the errant reply.  Imagine sending an inappropriate comment meant only for a close friend and then finding it has gone out to all parts of the Dallas Trees community.  This could be both personally and professionally damaging.

12) Embedded responses, those are replies in which the response is intermingled with the text from a previous post, are strongly discouraged.  Often these are posted with a different font face or color than the original text, however when they are posted to the Dallas Trees Google Groups website, included in the email summaries, or in the daily digest, which many people receive, these formatting differences are removed by the process.  It is difficult to distinguish the replies from the original text and these often appear as an unreadable jumble.  Please do not intersperse your comments within a previous response.  Reply in a separate paragraphs or post as complete thoughts. If appropriate the relevant portions original message can be quoted or included in its entirety in the response.

Discussion List Problems

1) If you are not receiving posts from the discussion list the most likely explanation is that anti-spam software is blocking it from your email program.  First check your email account and see if the posts from dallastrees@googlegroups.com are being put in a junk mail or bulk mail folder.  If they are, most programs have the option to allow you to tell the program that you want to receive these messages. If you have a separate spam-filter program, be sure to add dallastrees@googlegroups.com to your "safe" list.  

2)  Another potential problem source, if you do not receive the emails, are software blocks used by your Internet Service Provider. Your email provider may be blocking mail from googlegroups.com.  You can call your provider and check on this if you believe it is a problem, but likely they will not be able to correct it for just your account.  If this is the case for your email account, have the messages sent to an alternative email address with another provider or to a web based email account. In my case, to resolve this problem, I re- subscribed to ENTS using a hotmail email address (http://www.hotmail.com).  Both Hotmail and Gmail (http://gmail.google.com/) are examples of free web based email accounts that anyone can get.  One advantage of these accounts is that these addresses do not change as you move from place to place and change internet service providers. Outlook Express in Windows XP and older can be set to automatically download the messages from web-based accounts like hotmail  and gmail.     

3) If after trying these steps, you still are not receiving messages from Dallas Trees, or are unable to join the group, email me at bluedyscotty@gmail.com   and I will try to resolve the problem. 

My appreciation to the ENTSTrees Group for their information from which much of this is derived. It saved me much time on sharing various technical matters I know little about. I encourage anyone who has an interest in this site to look into the Eastern Native Tree Society. They are a very active and information organization.

Philip Erwin