Forum Guide, Rules and FAQs

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Engagement is the key to our success. Grass roots, bottom up collaboration is essential to grow GSAR in a way that works for all 78 community SAR teams. 

• Agreement is optional, discussion is mandatory.
• Welcome and encourage different points of view. 
• Keep it professional, no personal attacks.

Remember your different communications options: 

• Group email
• Group meeting (i.e. Zoom)
• 1:1 phone call
• 1:1 email
• Participate in a survey or create your own

• Apply by sending a message to the forum chair or to hello@bcssn.com 
• The forum chair will reply within a few days.
• After you receive the "You have been added" message (check your spam folder), you can post messages to the entire group using the group email address (i.e. GSAR-Advisory-Discussion@BCSSN.com).
• Messages from the group will be delivered to your email.
• Before you send a message to the group, take an extra moment to put yourself in the shoes of others and imagine how they might react to your message.
• For tricky or difficult issues and disagreements, don't be afraid to pick up the phone, email a single person directly or request help from the chair (potential opportunity for an online virtual group meeting).

BCSSN uses the Google Groups function within Google Suite to create a private discussion group for each different forum (i.e. GSAR-Advisory-Discussion). 

1. When you apply to join a group, the forum chair may have questions and then will add you to the group.
2. You will get a message from Google Groups confirming your membership. Check your spam folder! You may want to train your email server so that forum messages are not seen as spam. To do that, open the message and select the large message that says "Report not spam" or there is a smaller button at the top that says "Not spam."
3. When you send an email to the group (i.e. GSAR-Advisory-Discussion@BCSSN.com) it goes to ALL group members.
4. When you receive an email from the group. "Reply All" will go to ALL group members. "Reply" will only go to the member who sent the message.

You can view all the conversations or change your group settings (requires Gmail address): https://groups.google.com/ 

• Check the right corner to ensure you are logged in with the same Gmail address you used to join the group.
• To view conversations (go to the main screen)
• View group list (left hand menu: People - Members) 
• Change settings (left hand menu: My membership settings):
• Subscription delivery (each email, daily summary [digest or abridged])
• Leave group (top middle button beside Group Name while in the membership settings area)

• Messages become available to group members as they are sent so there is no real time moderation.
• BCSSN is committed to giving space and voice to all points of view and, assuming that communication is professional, moderation will hopefully not be needed.
• If a message is egregious and needs to be deleted by the forum chair, there will be a notice that a message was deleted and anyone who wants more information will need to contact the forum chair directly.