CAFCA-chat

CAFCA-chat is an email discussion list aimed at people working in the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy. This is primarily an initiative funded under Communities for Children, Early Childhood - Invest to Grow, and Local Answers. Officers of the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and others working in the early childhood sector are also encouraged to join the discussion group.

CAFCA-chat provides a forum for the discussion of research, policy and practice issues. It is designed to facilitate discussion and dissemination of knowledge about innovative and effective practice; including, what works, what doesn't work and new ways of working with families and communities.

Examples of topics for discussion might include:

Questions, problems or concerns that members would like debated.
Issues arising in projects in the key initiative areas.
Research outcomes/evaluation outcomes and learning.
News about events, personnel, recent developments in the field.
Notices about forthcoming conferences, workshops and training.
Pointers to new publications, online papers, resources and websites.

Moderation policy

CAFCA-chat is moderated. When you send a message to the list, it goes to the moderator who has the option to accept or discard it, or request you to post a revised message that conforms with the policy outlined below.

In general, messages are discarded if they:

Are not related to the field of early childhood and community development research, policy or practice.
Pertain to individual cases.
Are overly general requests for information and assistance.
Are inflammatory or unprofessional messages.
Are based on conjecture or do not make clear the evidence on which claims are based.
Are requests for contacts from people seeking a job (however, the list does accept employment postings).
Do not conform to 'netiquette' standards (eg, polite, professional).
Breach copyright laws.
Are intended for the List processor rather than the list.
Concern subscriptions to the list.
Are intended for an individual subscriber and are not of interest, or do not pertain to, the whole list.
Are automatic replies.
Contain attachments.
Contain political material.

To subscribe/unsubscribe

Important: All messages to CAFCA-chat (including when subscribing or unsubscribing) must be in plain-text format and not in HTML. The CAFCA-chat system does not support HTML format, because many people have email systems that only work in plain-text.

To join CAFCA-chat send the following e-mail in plain-text format:
To: majordomo@aifs.gov.au
Subject: (leave blank)
Message: subscribe CAFCA-chat

To remove your name from CAFCA-chat send the following e-mail in plain-text format:
To: majordomo@aifs.gov.au
Subject: (leave blank)
Message: unsubscribe CAFCA-chat

Mailing protocol

To submit a message for posting on CAFCA-chat:

Send mail to: CAFCA-chat@aifs.gov.au

To mail to list owner (problems etc):

Send mail to: owner-CAFCA-chat@aifs.gov.au

Subject line

As a courtesy to other subscribers, always fill in the Subject line when you post a message to CAFCA-chat

Default reply setting

This list is set up so that replies are sent to the entire list, not the author of the original message. Therefore, if you click 'Reply' to a message from the list, your message will be submitted to the Moderator for posting. It will not go to the author of the original posting.

Posting policy

Only subscribers may post to CAFCA-chat. Specifically, this means that only emails that contain a subscribed email address in the 'From: field' reach the Moderator. Messages from non-subscriber addresses are rejected (with notification to the sender) to protect list resources against spam. CAFCA-chat subscribers can subscribe under as many of their email addresses as desired if they want to post from different accounts. Of course, subscribing under multiple email addresses means that you receive CAFCA-chat postings at each of those addresses.

Message format

Messages in HTML format or those that have attachments will not be posted. Some subscribers do not have systems that support HTML format. Attachments present a virus risk to other list members, and can be extremely inconvenient for members with slower Internet connections. In the majority of cases, messages with attachments will be discarded by the CAFCA-chat moderator.

Auto-reply policy

Subscribers should refrain from using the auto-reply feature available in many email programs. Auto-replies are messages that are sent to people automatically when you are on vacation. When a subscriber selects this option, the CAFCA-chat Moderator receives an auto-reply for every post to the list. If you must use the auto-reply feature, please unsubscribe from the list while you are on vacation and re-subscribe upon your return.

List owner: Communities and Families Clearinghouse Australia. For any problems contact owner-CAFCA-chat@aifs.gov.au