Welcome to North Woodside. Our community association listserv exists to foster community within the neighborhood. Anyone who is a resident, residential property owner, or honorary association member* may subscribe. Neighbors use the listserv to share information about upcoming events and activities, exchange items, seek recommendations for local businesses, raise and advocate issues impacting the neighborhood, and discuss topics of community interest. Here you can expect lively discussion among neighbors of multiple generations, backgrounds, and tenures in the neighborhood. We encourage questions, discussion, and other participation with the understanding that others may have very different experiences and perspectives than yours. We ask that all members follow two requirements to help foster community: * Respect for all members of the community must be exhibited. * Messages must be signed with your Full Name and Street Name. Messages posted to the listserv go out immediately without review, and moderation is generally light-touch. Violations to the guidelines may result in moderation. Moderators are keenly supportive of viewpoint expression, and, if anything, discussions which suppress viewpoints will receive the most attention. A few guidelines have emerged over the two+ decades the listserv has operated, but in general if you use judgment, try not to irritate or antagonize people, and ask yourself: "What is the relevance of my note to several hundred neighbors?," you'll be fine. Permission should be obtained from others (or their guardians) prior to sharing their personal information or photos. For example, a neighbor's phone number or salary may be publicly available, but posting such information to the listserv without permission is unwelcome. Personal information is nuanced, but the intent of this guideline is to discourage members from intentionally or unintentionally causing one another embarrassment or harm, and to avoid undermining one another in ways counter to our goal of fostering community. Please be sensitive about forwarding emails to or from the listserv without permission. Many compelling personal stories have been shared on our listserv, and they are quite welcome here so long as they do not publicly disclose interpersonal disputes. Sharing personal stories may elicit responses you didn't expect. Keep in mind that one person's response is one point of view, and though at times unsettling to read, it is not the perspective of the entire neighborhood. We welcome participation in discussions, but please remember that there is a large audience, so try to bring new perspectives into a discussion when you choose to participate. Debate of ideas is welcome, and a bit of local business and initiative awareness is well-received. Spam, partisan political debate, and misinformation are not. If you think a message you received from elsewhere is relevant to the community, please don’t just forward it; rewrite it with a little personalization instead and include a link for further reading. Some issues discussed on the listserv are nuanced and complicated, and often difficult to debate in the listserv format. Please use the listserv to provide additional facts and arguments, and include your sources, as relevant; otherwise, the debate can lurch into repetition, misinformation, and antagonism. And we want our neighborhood to be a welcoming place for all, therefore the reporting of unfamiliar individuals pausing near your property or knocking on your door is considered spam. Finally, pause (for a moment or several days!) before responding to a provocative message. If you feel you or others in the community have been personally attacked, it's not beneficial to counter-attack the individual on the listserv for all to read. Debate the idea, or ignore the message altogether. A listserv can only foster community with the participation of members like you. So, WELCOME, we're glad you're here! * Former residents who have applied for and been granted honorary membership status by the NWCA board.