WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TWEETERS AND TWEETERS-ALERTS?

Tweeters and Tweeters-Alerts are two separate but related email lists devoted to birds and birding in the Cascadia region, especially Washington State. Anyone may subscribe to either or to both.

Tweeters is a general birding chat list. It has liberal posting guidelines and is unmoderated, meaning that subscribers may post freely and that postings are not screened. Bird observations, trip reports, field identification issues, and the status, distribution, habitats, natural history, and biology of the birds of Cascadia provide the prevalent — but not exclusive — subject matter of the list. Traffic is fairly heavy, averaging 500 – 600 postings per month.

Tweeters-Alerts is a moderated list with postings limited to current reports of noteworthy bird sightings in Washington State. The criteria for an appropriate posting are three: timeliness, brevity, and significance of the sighting (worthy of a place in the permanent ornithological record). In general, the subject birds are ones that avid birders may want to make an effort to go find for themselves. Message volume is considerably lower than for Tweeters.

Most subscribers belong to both lists.

HOW DO I SUBSCRIBE TO TWEETERS AND TWEETERS-ALERTS?

You must subscribe to each list separately.

For Tweeters, visit the list information page at:
http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters/

For Tweeters-Alerts, visit the list information page at:
http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters-alerts/

Many members prefer to receive posts bundled together once a day rather than individually as they're sent. To do this, choose the Digest option.

Your subscription won't be complete until you've replied to the confirmation message that will be sent to you by email. (Subscribers who log in with a UW NetID bypass this step.)

HOW DO I UNSUBSCRIBE OR EDIT MY SUBSCRIPTION OPTIONS?

Visit the appropriate list information page :

For Tweeters : http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters/

For Tweeters-Alerts : http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters-alerts/

and log in.

Then scroll to the bottom and click on the Unsubscribe or Edit Options button to be taken to your personal subscription page. Here you may unsubscribe, change your email address and password, suspend or reinstate message delivery, and customize the manner in which you receive posts.

If you have a UW NetID, you can use the UW Login to change your options. Otherwise you must use your subscriber password. Please see "What Is My Login Password?" below.

WHAT IS MY LOGIN PASSWORD?

When you subscribe, Mailman will send you a long Welcome message. Scroll down to the very end of this message to find the password you have been assigned.

If you do not have a UW NetID, then you must know your password to change your options (including changing the password itself) or to unsubscribe, as described above. If you forget this password, there is a button on your options page that will email your current password to you.

MAY I HAVE MORE THAN ONE SUBSCRIPTION?

You may have multiple Tweeters and Tweeters-Alerts subscriptions, but only one per list from any one address.

HOW DO I POST MESSAGES TO TWEETERS OR TWEETERS-ALERTS?

To post a message, send it to :

For Tweeters, tweeters@u.washington.edu

For Tweeters-Alerts, tweeters-alerts@u.washington.edu

For either list, you may post only from an address from which you are subscribed for that list.

WHAT ABOUT ATTACHMENTS AND FORMATTED TEXT?

Please do not send an email message to the list that has a formatted attachment, such as a graphic file or a Word document. These won't display on many mailers and may cause major headaches for Digest subscribers.

If you want to display digital photographs, upload them to a website and point users to it.

Also, remember that HTML will be converted to Plain Text by many email programs and list archives, with the resultant distortion of special character sets and the loss of formatting such as boldface and italics. It is always better to send only Plain Text messages, not HTML.

CAN I READ POSTINGS ON THE WEB?

You may read up-to-the-minute postings for both lists as well as all earlier ones back to 1999 by visiting the Archives pages :

For Tweeters : http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/

For Tweeters-Alerts : http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters-alerts/

The list archives are accessible to the public. No login is required. Archives are grouped by month and year. They may be read online or downloaded. An online search engine is provided.

You may also read the most recent postings, courtesy of Jack Siler, at :

For Tweeters : http://www.birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/TWET.html

For Tweeters-Alerts : [pending]

WHAT IF I HAVE FURTHER QUESTIONS OR PROBLEMS?

For Tweeters, send email to
tweeters-owner@mailman2.u.washington.edu

For Tweeters-Alerts, send email to
tweeters-alerts-owner@mailman1.u.washington.edu

Please do not post questions and problems to the entire list.

Thanks and enjoy the lists!

Dan Victor and Hal Opperman