Yahoo Help File

[Kelley]

Hi, everyone--

I've been working on a file that hopefully helps with the most 
common Yahoo problems run into by list members.  What I have below 
represents the most common questions the elves receive, but I'm 
sure there are other issues that I'm forgetting.  Any suggestions 
on that would be welcome.

Also, this is meant to be easy to understand for a person with 
little to no understanding of the ins and outs of Yahoo, so please, 
if anything seems unclear, let me know.

Thanks, everyone!

--Kelley


Yahoo Help File

CONTENTS:
RECEIVING EMAILS FROM THE GROUP
IF YOUR POST DOESN'T SHOW UP ON THE LIST
PRIVACY -- EMAIL ADDRESSES (Adding a new email account to your
profile)
PRIVACY -- NAMES (Changing the name shown on your posts)
BOUNCING
'HATE' MAIL, HARASSING/ABUSIVE MAIL
SPAM
VIRUSES


RECEIVING EMAILS FROM THE GROUP
Yahoo Groups offers four email settings:

Individual E-mails: All messages are sent to your inbox and the
subjects are prefixed with the name of the list. When you hit
"reply" the reply will go to the entire list.

Digest: A digest is one email containing containing up to 25 posts;
typically our group sends 2 - 4 digests per day (though during peak
times, e.g., new canon, it's possible to see as many as 30 - 40
digests per day).

Special Notices: This is like webview, except that we can send
emergency e-mails to your mailbox. The List Administrators use the
Special Notices feature responsibly, only sending Special Notices
in the case of important ADMIN messages, so they prefer that
members be on "Special Notices."

*Any message with ADMIN in the subject line is a message sent to
the entire group, never specifically to any individual. If you
tried to reply to this message, that reply would go to the whole
group, not to the elves. If you want your reply to go to the elves,
make sure to replace the
HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com posting address with
HPforGrownups-owner at ... owner address.

No Mail: Many people like to read the messages on the list Web
sites. This has the advantage of not clogging up your inbox, but
the disadvantage that you can't download all of the posts and then
go off-line to read them. If you are particularly irritated by pop-
up advertising, click on "expand messages" (which allows you to
scroll through 30 messages on a single screen). You'll avoid the
pop-ups. If you click on "thread" and then "expand messages" you
can view a complete thread on one screen.

Note: When you join a Yahoo Group, you are automatically set to
receive individual messages. If you prefer a different setting you
can change this yourself by going to the group online
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/) and clicking on
"Edit My Membership".

Note: Changes to your email settings, along with unsubscribing from
a group, can sometimes take a bit of time for Yahoo to process.
This can range anywhere from a few hours to a few days.
Unfortunately, there is nothing for it but to be patient; the elves
can do nothing to speed it up, though we can check to make sure that
the new setting was saved or that the unsubbing was successful.
Rejoining and unsubbing again, or changing your settings back and
forth only delay the process.

If the changes do not go into effect within a couple days or if you
experience any trouble, please let the elves know:
HPforGrownups-owner at yahoogroups.com


IF YOUR POST DOESN'T SHOW UP ON THE LIST
A few reasons this might occur:
-It's still 'pending' - there's a period of moderated status when
you join this group: your posts are automatically detoured to the
pending queue and must be sent through by a list elf. We do our
best to make sure posts do not languish for too long, but we can
sometimes get behind. If several hours have passed since you sent
your post without it coming through, please contact the elves:
HPforGrownups-owner at yahoogroups.com

-The email account you use for the group is 'bouncing' (see below).
When this happens your post is rerouted to the list elves, and
because your account is bouncing, we're unable to reach you to
explain what has happened. Note: If your account is bouncing, it
does not matter whether you attempt to post by email or webview;
the result is the same and the message will go to the elves and not
the group.

-The post was 'misfired' - the email address was typed incorrectly,
it was sent to a different list, was sent to the author of the post
you're replying to rather than the group address, etc.

-There are times when posts just 'vanish into the ether' or 'are
eaten by Yahoomort' - we are unable to determine the exact reason
your post never came through. Likely due to one of the above
reasons, as well as possible server issues. If the problem is
recurring, best to contact Yahoo via their Help links, and/or your
ISP.

*Since it can be so very frustrating to spend a great deal of time
composing a post only to have it disappear, it's helpful to get
into the habit of saving a copy before you hit send.


PRIVACY -- EMAIL ADDRESSES
Our groups (main list, OTC, Movie) do not have public archives, so
a person must be a member of the group to have access to any posts
you make. Our Announcements list *does* have public archives, so
non-members can read messages there without joining that group.

Email address: Yahoo "munges" addresses online, which means that
someone reading posts by webview will not be able to see your full
email address; what they will see is something like
this: "hpfgu_elves at ..." List members can see their own full
addresses in their own posts (and can also delete their own posts),
and the list elves are able to see full addresses. (This goes for
the messages on the Announcements list, as well.)

However, full addresses are visible in emails. This means that
list members who receive posts by either Individual Emails or
Digests will be able to see the address in the messages they
receive in their inbox.

For this reason, many people choose to create a free email account
(Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, etc.) for their membership in Yahoo groups.
If you use this option, please make sure to regularly check your
email account, both to keep the account from being terminated or
going bouncing, and to see any messages that might be sent to you
from the List Elves.

To add this new email address to your existing Yahoo user account,
click on "Edit My Membership" via any group page and then click
"Add new email address". Enter the new address, and click the
button to verify the account. An email will then be sent to the
new email account with a link that must be clicked to finish the
process; sometimes it can take a few hours to receive the
verification email, so patience once again.


PRIVACY -- NAMES
If you post to the group by email, the name you use for your email
account will be shown in the post itself and on the Messages page
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/messages) under the
"Author" column. To change this, you must change the name in your
email account; depending on the email program you use, it may be
found under Tools, Accounts; Mail Options; Settings; Options.
(These sorts of changes happen immediately.)

For those who post and reply to posts by webview, the name shown is
your Yahoo ID.


BOUNCING
Here's Yahoo's nice explanation of just what 'bouncing' means:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/mygroups/mygroups-07.html

It refers to the email account you are using for YahooGroups; when
your account is bouncing you will no longer be able to receive
messages from the group and you'll not be able to reply to the
group. You can access the group by webview but when you hit reply,
you have two options -- your reply can go only to the person who
wrote the post you're replying to, or it will go to the list elves.

The 'default' is that the message will go to the list elves, and of
course, as your account is bouncing, there's no way for us to get
an email to you letting you know where your post has gone.

The best way to determine if your account is bouncing is to sign in
to Yahoo and check the "My Groups" link; if you're bouncing,
there'll be a notice at the top telling you so with a link to click
to reset your account. The instructions Yahoo gives are easy to
follow, but if you run into any troubles, please contact the elves
at HPforGrownups-owner at yahoogroups.com and we'll help you out.


'HATE' MAIL, HARASSING/ABUSIVE MAIL
As disappointing as it is, in a group this size, the odds are
greater that some list members behave in unfortunate ways. The
elves do not have any control over private correspondence between
list members, but we do hold this behavior in the greatest contempt.

If you should ever receive a message of this nature, we urge you to
report the sender to both Yahoo and the sender's ISP. To do this,
you must make sure to not delete the message, as you will need to
send a copy with the accompanying source info to both Yahoo and any
ISPs. For information on how to do this, please contact the elves:
HPforGrownups-owner at yahoogroups.com


SPAM - Marketing Preferences
One helpful way to reduce spam to your email account is to change
the 'Marketing Preferences' setting on your Yahoo account. To do
this, sign in to Yahoo, go into "My Account". This takes you to
the "Yahoo! Account Info" page; in the "Member Information" section,
there's a link that says "Edit your marketing preferences."

Follow this to the next page; in the "Special offers and marketing
communications from Yahoo!" section, you'll see a series of checked
boxes. Uncheck them (any you do not want) and scroll to the bottom
of the page where you'll see a "Save Changes" button to click.

You should see a decrease in spam within a couple days.


VIRUSES
None of the HPfGU groups allow attachments to be sent, so you should
never receive a virus from a message sent to one of our groups.

However, it may happen that a fellow list member may become infected
and inadvertently pass a virus on to you. This could happen because
you and the list member may have had direct correspondence offlist
or because the list member has group messages on their computer and
the virus is sending itself to all email addresses it finds.

The best protection against becoming infected:
- Do not open any email attachments you are not expecting
- Get an anti-virus program and keep it updated (Grisoft offers a
good free program: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1 )

*Please do not post to our main list about viruses, hoaxes, or
phishing scams.