NTTDS now has THREE Yahoo groups that are open for anyone to join. Here is a description of each group, followed by general information about joining and using Yahoo Groups.

NOTE: In this page, the "@" character in email addresses is represented by "[a][t]", to hopefully keep the email addresses from being harvested by spammers.

• NTTDS-Announce
  This is our electronic newsletter. Messages can only be sent by our newsletter editor, usually just 2 or three a month, so it is safe from SPAM. EVERYONE interested in NTTDS is encouraged to sign up for this group to keep up with the latest schedule changes and special events.
  • Web Site (for full members only): http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NTTDS-Announce/
  • Subscribe: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NTTDS-Announce/join OR send email to nttds-announce-subscribe[a][t]yahoogroups.com
  • Un-Subscribe: Login to http://groups.yahoo.com/ and delete the group from your "My Groups" list,
    OR send email to nttds-announce-unsubscribe[a][t]yahoogroups.com
  • Send a message to the Moderator/Owner: nttds-announce-owner[a][t]yahoogroups.com
• NTTDS
  This is for dance-related announcements and discussions. Any member of the group can send messages to the group, and they will be delivered to all members of the group. Although there are no restrictions on the messages, we ask you please limit the topics to dance activities and events, or discussions about NTTDS itself.
  NOTE: This group is NOT listed in the Yahoo groups directory, nor is it listed in a Yahoo groups Search. This is to help prevent spammers from finding it.
  • Web Site (for full members only): http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nttds/
  • Subscribe: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NTTDS/join OR send email to nttds-subscribe[a][t]yahoogroups.com
  • Un-Subscribe: Login to http://groups.yahoo.com/ and delete the group from your "My Groups" list,
    OR send email to nttds-unsubscribe[a][t]yahoogroups.com
  • Send a message to the Moderator/Owner: nttds-owner[a][t]yahoogroups.com
  • Send a message to all the members of the group: nttds[a][t]yahoogroups.com
• NTTSNotDance
  This is for sharing NON-DANCE information with the other group members (e.g. house for rent, puppies or kittens available, art show openings, etc.). Any member of the group can send messages, and all messages are delivered to all members.
  • Web Site (for full members only): http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nttdsnotdance/
  • Subscribe: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nttdsnotdance/join OR send email to nttdsnotdance-subscribe[a][t]yahoogroups.com
  • Un-Subscribe: Login to http://groups.yahoo.com/ and delete the group from your "My Groups" list,
    OR send email to nttdsnotdance-unsubscribe[a][t]yahoogroups.com
  • Send a message to the Moderator/Owner: nttdsnotdance-owner[a][t]yahoogroups.com
  • Send a message to all the members of the group: nttdsnotdance[a][t]yahoogroups.com

General information about Yahoo Groups

A Yahoo Group is basically an email mailing list, with an archive of the messages kept on a web site. A Group can be setup as announce only (only the Moderator can send messages to the group), or as shared or open (ALL members can send messages). In either case, the messages are delivered to all members.

There are two "levels" of membership:

• A full membership requires a free Yahoo account. That allows you to receive email messages, read an archive of the messages via the web site, and control other aspects of your membership. You can choose the email address the messages are sent to, and you can choose to receive each message one by one, or a daily digest of all that day's messages, or no direct email messages (you have to use the web site to read the message archive).
  NOTE: If you sign up for a new Yahoo account, go to the "My Acccount" page and click the link to "Edit your marketing preferences". By default, Yahoo signs you up for several marketing emails. You probably want to deselect all or most of them.
• Without a Yahoo account, you can still receive the email messages, but you cannot access the archive on the web site or control the delivery method, etc. All messages will be sent one by one as soon as they are received by the group. To sign up for for a group without using a Yahoo account, send an email message (with any subject and content) to the Group's Subscribe email address. This will send an invitation email to you. Reply to the invitation email to join the group.

For non-announce groups that allow all members to send messages to the group, simply send an email to the group's email address. The group will deliver the message to all members in the group.

Anyone can unsubscribe from a group at any time by sending an unsubscribe request to the group.
Members with a Yahoo account can also unsubscribe via the Yahoo Groups web site http://groups.yahoo.com/. After you login, you can delete any group from your list of groups.

Privacy Concerns:
Members of a group can see the list of members, but only part of each member's email address is listed. That provides some protection from SPAM.

Each Yahoo member has a profile with some options to control how much information is displayed about the user. The profile also allows setting multiple email addresses for each user, so any of them can be used as the destination email address for Group mailings.

SPAM Filtering:
If you have some sort of spam filtering for your email, be sure to set it to allow messages from the Yahoo groups you join.
The FROM field will contain the email address of whoever sent the message.
The TO field will contain the email address of the group.
The SUBJECT field will start with the group name in square brackets.
Example: If John Smith sends a message to the nttdsnotdance group,
the FROM field will be John Smith's email address
the TO field will be "nttdsnotdance[a][t]yahoogroups.com" (without the quotes)
the Subject field will start with "[nttdsnotdance]" (without the quotes)

Many email services like Yahoo, MSN, Earthlink, etc. have built-in spam filtering. Typically, messages FROM someone who is in your address book are NOT considered spam. It is not practical to use this for Yahoo group messages, because they come FROM the actual sender. You would have to have the entire group membership list in your address book to guarantee messages from any group member are not considered spam.

The best approach to keep group messages from being considered spam is to create a FILTER using the SUBJECT or TO field, since those contain the name or address of the group. Virtually all online email providers and email programs provide custom filters (also called Rules in some mail programs).

Here is how to setup a filter in a Yahoo online account. Other online accounts should be similar.

• Click the mail OPTIONS link.
• Click the FILTERS link.
• Click the ADD button.
• Enter a NAME for the filter, like "NTTDS-Announce".
• In the empty box next to the "Subject" and "Contains" boxes, enter the name of the group, in square brackets, e.g. [NTTDS-Announce] (leave the "Match Case" box unchecked)
  Alternately, you can fill in the "To/Cc header" with the email address of the group (e.g. nttds-announce[a][t]yahoogroups.com).
• For the "Move the message to" value, select "Inbox".
• Click the "Add Filter" button at the lower left.

If you have questions or comments about this web site or about NTTDS, send email to NTTDS.
Webmaster: Glenn Manuel