About Posting to the Newsletters
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How do I post a message?
Note: this information is about how to post to a BPN email newsletter.
If you are wondering how to post to the website, we do not accept
submissions for the website, only for the newsletters. More info about this is
here.
You must be a subscriber in order to post a message.
If you are a subscriber, you can post to any of the newsletters
using the posting forms
on the BPN website.
You'll fill out the form, and if it is sucessfully submitted (you will get
an email confirmation), then your message will be automatically
included in the next issue, subject to moderator review.
See How does it work? for details about
how this works.
Every BPN newsletter
has the web address of its posting form at the top. Or,
you can go directly to this page.
If you aren't sure which newsletter to post to, see Which newsletter should I post to?
If you aren't a subscriber, and you are eligible to subscribe,
you can join the list. It's free.
See Who can join the list?.
Click here for
the subscribe form.
Once you have received the "Welcome" message, you will be able to post to the
newsletters.
We can't accept postings from people who aren't eligible to subscribe (out of
area, or not parents.) For more info see Who can join the list?.
Several hundred postings come in each week to the 12 BPN moderators,
for eight different newsletters,
so it is very time-consuming for us to track down an individual posting for someone.
Please use these guidelines to find out what might have happened:
The posting process is automated. All postings that are made using
the forms on the BPN website are automatically included
in the next draft for that newsletter.
Most of the newsletters are prepared and mailed once a week.
To see when the draft was prepared for the newsletter you posted to,
check the "post by" date on the posting form.
Once the draft is prepared, it is automatically sent to
the moderator for the newsletter, who
reviews the draft and then mails it out within a day or two.
Very rarely, moderators
return postings that do not meet BPN policies. In this case, you will
almost always get a notice about that. But all the other
postings that came in during the week before, will appear in the next
newsletter.
- Did you post after the "post by" deadline? Deadlines are listed on each
posting form.
If you posted after the deadline then
your message will appear in a future issue.
- Did you receive an email confirmation after you posted? If you did,
then your posting will be automatically included in the next
draft. Check the date on your confirmation and the deadline on the posting form
to see which newsletter draft your post was (or will be) included in.
- If you did not get an email confirmation, then you
need to post again because your posting did not go through.
- Which newsletter did you post to? Sometimes people expect their posting
to appear in the very next newsletter they receive, but there are
12 different newsletters, each moderated by a different volunteer.
Note that Advice and Recommendations are split up among several
different volunteers, and they are mailed at different times.
See List of newsletters to identify which one you
posted to.
- Did you post to the correct newsletter? If you didn't, this
will cause a delay. See
Which newsletter should I post to?
- Has the newsletter you posted to been mailed out yet? See
the List of Recently Mailed Newsletters
to see when your newsletter was actually mailed.
- For Q&A newsletters like Recommendations:
Do you see your question on the Topic List on the posting form?
Check the list of topics on the posting form
for the newsletter you posted to. If you don't see your topic, you either
missed the deadline and you should wait until the next issue,
or we never got your post and you need to post again.
- Did you post a question that did not receive any
responses? Not all questions receive responses, and it may give you
the impression that your question never appeared. You can
see a list of questions on the posting form
that you posted to, and a list of questions that received responses on
the Topic List. We're sorry if you didn't get
any responses, but it does happen. There are some posting
tips here.
- Were you expecting to find your post on the BPN website?
Not all newsletter postings are archived, and the ones that are,
may be archived months or years later.
See About the Website for details.
If you did post to the correct newsletter before the deadline,
but you don't have the email confirmation,
and you did not find your question in one of the Topic Lists,
then your best bet is to post again.
If you still are not sure what happened, you can
write to the moderator for that
newsletter (email address at the top of the newsletter). If you write, please
include either your email confirmation or the exact title of your post,
and the date you posted, so we can try to find out what happened.
Most people who respond will post to a subsequent newsletter, so watch
the BPN newsletters for replies. If you included your email address in your post, then
you might get responses by email too. Some questions do not receive any responses.
There is a list of Recently
Mailed newsletters if you aren't sure when past newsletters were mailed.
The Posting Form for each newsletter shows posting
deadlines and how often the newsletter is usually mailed.
For some newsletters - Advice, Recommendations, Schools, House & Garden, and Teens,
we keep a list of topics that received responses. See this page
to check if your topic received responses.
A list of the newsletters that are currently going out, and when they
are usually mailed, is shown on
This Page.
Here are links to the FAQ for each newsletter:
... Advice
... Announcements
... Childcare
... Household
... Marketplace
... Recommendations
... Schools
... Parents of Teens
Can I post anonymously?
Yes, unless you are posting a message where people will need to contact you, such as
a "for sale" item.
For all the posting forms, we ask for your email address so we
can check our subscriber list to make sure that the posting is coming from a subscriber.
However, most of the posting forms ask you whether your email address should appear
in the newsletter.
You can post an anonymous message to the Advice, Household, Recommendations, Schools,
and Teens newsletters. Your email or
name will not be included unless you choose this opeion on the
posting form. At the end of the posting form for those
newsletters, you will have the opportunity to indicate how you
want your message signed. If you don't want your email and/or name included, it won't be.
You can sign as "anonymous" or "a mom" or however you'd like.
However, be aware that the moderator for the newsletter will be able to
see your email address. This is necessary so that we can handle postings that
don't meet BPN policy (return them to you, or ask you to clarify, or etc.)
If you want to be anonymous, but you also want to include an email
address so people can respond directly to you, you can open a temporary
email account at www.yahoo.com or www.hotmail.com and sign your
message with that. This is
especially useful for sensitive topics where respondents
want anonymity and don't want to respond publicly in the newsletter.
For the Announcements newsletter, we require a contact name and email for all postings.
For Marketplace and Childcare, we need either your name and email/phone#, or someone else's.
See also: Privacy Policy?
What is the difference between the Advice Line and
Recommendations?
These two get confused sometimes, and it isn't always clear to us either, but
here is a general guideline.
A recommendation is a review of a specific person, place, or thing. Examples
include recommendations for vacation spots, dentists,
therapists, breastpumps, carseats and strollers.
Advice is more a "how to" sort of message, usually about parenting. It
is some other parent's opinion about how you might address a
particular problem or event. For example, questions about your
child's sleep, eating, health or play habits,how to get along with
your children, spouse, neighbors, medical professionals, how
to use a breastpump, how to de-stress the dinner hour.
The posting form for each newsletter
has info about deadlines. This is also shown on the
List of the Newsletters.
In general, you should try to post your message at least two days before the mailing day
if you want your message to appear in the next issue.
Please note! we make every attempt to send out the newsletters at regular times as listed on that page.
However, we are
all volunteers with kids and jobs - we go on vacation and things come up at work,
so you can't really count on us to be always on time
the way you can count on advertising you have to pay for.
Clicking on the Submit button doesn't work. Links don't
seem to work either. Nothing happens.
When you click on a button, you
should get a new page with either an error message or some other
message. If nothing happens when you click,
and you still see the same form, your browser has probably gotten into
a "limbo" state where form elements don't work anymore, and clicking
on links does nothing. I don't know why it happens but I've had the
experience before too. The only thing to do is to exit from Netscape or IE
( File->Exit )
and then fire it up again. You might want to first copy-paste your message into
Notepad or an email so you don't have to re-type everything.
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Last updated: Jun 26, 2009
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