We’ve created this short video tutorial on how to modify, stop or remove your listings from the SaltSpringCommunity.com Exchange. Enjoy!

Wordles are a tool for generating “word clouds” from content within SaltSpringCommunity.com and from the SaltSpringCommunity.com List. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear most frequently. You can see some interesting rhythms in language that the community here on the island are using to describe what we’re interested in, what is happening, what we’re looking for, what we’ve found, etc. Here are some examples of our community “word cloud” art;

SaltSpringCommunity.com Postings – November, 2009

50 Random Messages Sent to the SaltSpringCommunity.com List – November 2009

Watch the full video interview of SaltSpringCommunity.com founders Suzanne Little and Christopher Roy as they talk with John Bateman on CFSI Radio about SaltSpringCommunity.com, the SaltSpringCommunity.com List, the ins and outs of moderating the list and Tom Hooper’s hair.

Part One

Part Two

Photograph by Allison McDougall

The thing about the Salt Spring Community Email List is that you just never know when it might come in handy.  It’s a love-hate relationship, really.  With a different “like new” queen-size bed listed almost everyday, I’ve gotten to wonder what everyone on this island is sleeping on. And when you live in a 400-sq-foot suite up the steepest Salt Spring driveway known to south-enders, the last thing you want is another bed – or anything else, for that matter.

Since I first signed up for the daily emails, I was mostly a passive observer: reading each email with a touch of voyeuristic curiosity. It felt like sitting behind blinds with binoculars, watching the neighbourhood shenanigans. But when you live in the sticks like I do, there are no neighbours to spy on, so this was filling that void, I suppose.

And then I found myself in need of a special something.

You see, I take part in this thing called Bench Monday. Its just for fun, really.  There are only a few rules: take a photo of yourself standing on a bench, wear something pretty and it must be taken on the day named Monday. Extra points are given for live props, and double points if the live prop is a chicken. The resulting photo gets posted to the Flickr group, and as you can see, it is just pure silliness.

I’d participated a few weeks in a row; once with a newborn bunny, another with a goat, then her newborn kid a week later, and a polish-crested hen also made an appearance. Looking for inspiration, I mentioned my little Monday project to a friend. He suggested I hang a dripping bloody butcher knife off my belt and hold two chickens upside down, one in each hand. The henhouse slaughter idea made me laugh. Not wanting to offend the faint-hearted vegans in the group, I didn’t pursue it. But the idea stuck around. After mentioning it to someone at work, she suggested replacing a live chicken with a rubber chicken. What an idea!  Where would I find rubber chickens, I wondered? Oh yeah, that Community Email List thingy.

Once I sent out the email request, it wasn’t long before my inbox starting filling up with responses. It was amazing how many people were game. Not one single person was willing to sell or give away their rubber chicken – they all made that very clear. However, everyone was quite enthusiastic about lending it out for a short time. I had such an overwhelming response, that I had to turn down many friendly Salt Springers. One particular generous woman had to meet me and tell me the story of all three chickens she was lending. They clearly held a special place in her heart.

The actual Bench Monday photo shoot never takes more than a few minutes.  Its something I fit in during my workday, with the generous help of a creative coworker. We took advantage of the rubber chickens, added a butcher knife and some ketchup-cum-blood and I stood on a bench.  Big smiles all around.

So, theres one success story from the Salt Spring Community Email List.  If you’re inspired, please check out my Bench Monday – Rubber Chicken Edition photo on Flickr or the rest of my Flickr photostream.

Thanks to Christopher Roy and Suzanne Little for all the hardwork put into keeping the list and their website going.  Without it, I’d be rubber chicken-less.  And that’d be no fun at all.

NOTE: No Rubber Chickens Were Harmed in the Making of this Photo

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More About Allison McDougall

Allison McDougall is a prairie girl, now living in the deep south, on Salt Spring Island. Having worked with recovering heroin addicts in Vancouver for years, and advocating for women involved in the criminal justice system, Allison needed a breather from the big city. She came to this little westcoast island for a two-week break – to volunteer on an organic farm; that was four years ago.  She looks forward to one day calling herself a Local.

Allison works at Salt Spring Island Cheese Company with a bunch of cool cats, including Ms. J, the most amazing Bench Monday assistant on earth.

Allison would one day like to call herself a photographer.  She is practicing every day to that end and is always seeking free Polaroid, Holga or D-SLR camera. ;)

Photo By: the_trial on Flickr

Help your fellow mailing list subscriber. Write a clear, short and understandable subject line.

Writing a good subject line improves the chances of your message getting read and helps all list members quickly scan what is, or isn’t, of interest to them so that they don’t have to open each message.

How do I write a good subject line?

A good subject line is short and gets the point of the email with just enough detail, but not too much, for the recipient to have a sense of what the email is about without having to open the message.

Here are some good (albeit cheeky) examples:

For Sale: A Bunch of Stuff They Won’t Take at the Dump – $80
For Rent: 8 Bedroom Island Chicken Coop – $10,000
Wanted: Deer That Eat Scotch Broom and Nothing Else
Event: Rubber Boot Maintenance Workshop – April 1st, ArtSpring
Free: Some Stuff The Previous Owner Refused to Take
Thank You: To Everyone Who Thinks This is Funny

Some not so great examples;

Dog
House
Eat
Tree
Fwd:
Thank You
Or the worst of them all…. the blank subject line!

You get the idea.

If you want some additional ideas, read this short guide on writing subject lines.

Photo By: novemberwolf on Flickr

One of the best ways to manage large volumes of email from our list is to create emails filters or rules in your email software or service. Using these methods you can move email out of your inbox to specific folder so that your inbox doesn’t get clogged up with mail from our list. This way you can read emails from the list as they arrive, or you can read them whenever you want without interrupting the regular email coming into your inbox.

In Gmail for example, you can create a filter that tags all email from the group and it skips the inbox so you only look at it in its own category when you want to. Nice!

All email tools have some version of this. Here are links to the most popular ones, you can search Google for others not on this list;

* Gmail
* Yahoo
* Hotmail
* MS Outlook
* MS Entourage

We hope that you find these links useful, but regrettably we are not able to offer technical assistance of any kind. We will not be able to answer technical questions if you contact us with them. Thank you for your understanding.