Keep everyone connected with group e-mail

Zatni Arbi, Columnist, Jakarta, zatni@cbn.net.id

For the last few months, I have been in constant contact with some of my friends from our student years more than two decades ago. One of them lives in New Zealand, one in Belgium, one in the Netherlands, two in England, one in Malang and one in Bogor.

Although we are scattered all over the world, it has always felt as if we were still students spending breaks between classes chatting in the park on our old campus. Arranging a get-together now is so easy. Keeping in touch is also cheap, as no international phone call is necessary. All I did was create a mailing list using the free Yahoo! Groups service.

The group mail does more than just allow us to chitchat over the Internet. When one of us has a daunting task of translating the Indonesian phrase etos kerja into English, they can throw a question to the group. "Should it be 'work ethic' or 'work ethics'?" Then one of us, whose significant other is a Briton, would provide a native-speaker's answer to the question.

The e-mail, which was first invented 30 years ago by Ray Tomlinson, a scientist with BBN Technologies, is definitely one of the most invaluable applications that the Internet has brought us. The group e-mail service, which is provided by Yahoo! Groups, takes it to a higher level.

As one message is read by multiple recipients, the chance it will be responded to immediately increases significantly.

The mail group can also be a tremendous help to those in faraway lands in coping with family losses, for example, as it allows them to share their feelings and emotions with the rest of the group and receive support and consolation in return.

Yahoo! Groups is one of the most popular mail group services on the Internet. Starting a mail group is actually easy, though Yahoo! still has to make the process more transparent and straightforward.

If you want to start a group of your own, go to www.yahoogroups.com and register to get your Yahoo! ID. A Yahoo ID is not a Yahoo! e-mail address, though. It is an ID that shows that you have registered as a member of Yahoo! community.

During the registration, Yahoo! will ask you for your e-mail address. If you like you can even get an e-mail address from Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com). After you submit your registration form, Yahoo! will then e-mail you your ID to verify that you are now registered.

Once you have your Yahoo! ID, you can login using the ID and password that you have created. Once logged in, you can start a new group right away by clicking the "Start a Group" link on the top right hand of the screen or the "Start a New Group" link in the center of the screen. This will give you a screen like the one in the accompanying picture. All you have to do is fill in all the fields in the registration form.

First, you have to give your group a name, such as "Class of 1982". Then you have to create an e-mail address for this group, such as class_1982. The domain address will be yahoogroups.com. This is the e-mail address that you should send your message to if you want everybody in the group to receive it.

Then you have to add a description of the group, basically telling everybody what it is intended for. The language option is not really important, because it does not affect anything. You need to decide whether this mail group should be a private or a public one. If you intend to use it only among yourselves, you should choose "Unlisted".

There are two more choices that you have to make. First, you will be asked whether you want to keep control of who the members are or whether anybody who has heard of the mail group can join at will. If you prefer control, you should opt for "Restricted" membership. For maximum control, choose "Closed", which means that members can only join if you invite them.

Not everybody can write good and polite e-mails. To avoid misunderstanding or offensive messages, you can choose "Moderated", which allows you to check and approve messages before they are sent to the other members. If you are sure that your members are responsible people, you can leave the group "Unmoderated". It will free you from the tedious task of editing every message.

Then you just follow the rest of the procedures as guided by Yahoo! Groups. In the final step, you can add the e-mail addresses of the people that you would like to have in your mail group. Do not forget to add the name of each individual member right after his or her e-mail address.

You can choose whether to invite people or not to join your mail-group or add them to your list without waiting for their approval. In any case, they will have the opportunity to withdraw from your mail group at any time.

There are still a lot of things to learn about the mail group service. In the next part, we will see what else the mail group can do for us and how we can manage it by adding more members or by taking some of them out.