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| Use Solution Exchange Features? |  | Manage my membership? |
Join a Community?
To join any one of the Solution Exchange Communities, you must be subscribed to the Community’s mailgroup. To do this, click on the “Sign up” link in the grey top bar. This opens the “Communities” page. Then click on “sign-up” next to the Community you wish to belong. Alternatively, you can click on any of the Community icons on the left navigation bar, which takes you to the Community’s Home Page. Once there, click on the “Sign up” drop-down in the “how to participate” tab.
You will go to a new page that asks you for your e-mail, and then opens up the Sign-up Form. Complete all the required fields in the sign-up form, make sure you read and accept the Membership Agreement, and click on “submit”.
To subscribe to a second Community, just repeat the process - select the next Community you would like to join from the list, and click on “Sign up.”
The form is sent to the Moderator of the first Community selected, who will contact you by phone or e-mail, normally within 3-4 days. The Moderator will find out more about your interests and answer any questions you may have. He/she will then subscribe you to the mailgroup, and you will automatically receive a “Welcome message” with some basic information and a password to access the Community’s member-only features (such as the message archives).
Edit My Profile?
Your member profile was created from the information you provided in the Sign up form. To edit your member profile, click on the “Log in” link in the grey top bar. Enter the same email address that you signed up with, and the password provided in your “Welcome message.” If you cannot remember your password, use the link on the page to get a new one.
Once logged in you will go to a page where you can access the Communities you are a member of, as well as your member profile. You can edit you member profile and update it according to your status. You can also change your password.
Unsubscribe? We do not have an automatic “unsubscribe” facility, because we prefer to understand why you want to leave so that we can serve our members better. In case you wish to unsubscribe to any of the Communities, just email us at the Community address or to any one of the Community Moderators. You can simply state, “unsubscribe”, but we encourage you to briefly state your reason. Also, if you are subscribed to more than one Community, be sure to mention which Communities you would like to be removed from.
Within a day of sending the email, you will be removed from the respective Community mailgroup.
Participate in the mailgroup?
Submit a Query?
Solution Exchange e-mail-based services – “Help”, “Comment” and “Discuss” – all begin with one member posting a query for the other members to respond.
Members normally submit queries to their Community colleagues through e-mail, sending them to the Community’s e-mail address or directly to the Community Moderator. Either way, the Moderator will receive your question and inform you about when it would be posted to the Community, or perhaps help you reframe it so that it is clearer and more likely to get the replies you are hoping for (to learn more refer to “the rules we follow” under the “How to Participate” tab.) Once you are both satisfied with the query contents, the moderator “approves” it and it is posted on the Community’s mailgroup.
Only Community members are subscribed to the mailgroup and can participate in Community interactions. If you are not a member, you cannot send queries or access the discussion threads. So If you would like to submit a query to a Community you are not a member of, you must first sign up and become a member.
Respond to a Query?
When a query comes into your e-mail mailbox and you want to respond, simply hit the “reply” button. The message is first received by the Moderator, who will then “approve” it and post it on the Community’s mailgroup. Before posting it the Moderator may contact you in case the message needs editing to conform to the rules that contributors should follow (see “the rules we follow” under the “How to Participate” tab.)
Sometimes you may find your message combined with others into one “Multiple Contributors” message. This is done at the Moderator’s discretion, mainly to cut down on the numbers of individual e-mails posted to avoid “e-mail overload,” one of our more frequent complaints. Even though your message may be combined with others, it will always feature on its own in the corresponding “Consolidated Reply”
Take part in an e-discussion or “Cross-Posting” with another Community?
Often a query or discussion topic is of interest to members of more than one Community. For example, “Empowerment of Women Panchayat Representatives” would be an interesting issue for both the Decentralization and the Gender Communities. When such queries are posed, the Moderator will post the query on a combined Community mail list, with the Subject prefix of “[se-decn] [se-gen]” in this case, where all members will be able to read the postings of both groups.
When a particular message would be of interest to members of several Communities, Solution Exchange uses an “opt-in” procedure to invite participation from all relevant Communities. A “for info” message is circulated to the relevant Communities that a discussion is taking place on, for example, the Decentralization Community about “Human Development ‘report cards’ for District Planning”, which could be of interest to members of any Community concerned with poverty-related indicators. Members can then “opt in” to this discussion by contacting the Decentralization Community Moderator, who will subscribe them only to this discussion and not as full members of the Decentralization Community. Once the Consolidated Reply is issued, then the member’s association ends.
Retrieve past Consolidated Replies and message threads?
The complete set of Community Queries, Responses and Consolidated Replies, as well as Updates, are posted on our Web-based e-mail application that members can access using their email ID and password. To access this site, click on the “mailgroup” tab in the Community Home Page. It will open a Log in page, and once logged in you will be taken to a page listing all the Communities you are a member of. Click on the “read messages” to view the web-based message threads.
Non-members can only view the public versions of Consolidated Replies (email IDs of members are removed) by using the Consolidated Reply Search or Browse options on the Community homepage. Non-members are unable to view individual message archives.
Send messages from the website
Members who prefer working off the web or who may not always have access to their e-mail programme have the option of sending messages from Solution Exchange’s web-based e-mail application. The message is received as an e-mail and its approval follows the same process as a message sent via e-mail. Log in to your Member page and click on “read messages” of the relevant Community. Click on the tab “new topic,” to submit a query, or “post reply” to submit a reply to an ongoing thread. Use the template provided to e-mail a message, which will be received by the Moderator for action.
Send an announcement or a message?
Submit an item for the Update
The right column of the Community Home Page – “Community Update” – is where Community members can find out what is happening in their Community. Members can post announcements for the attention of members. This section provides current information on events, job opportunities, partnering opportunities, etc. Messages stay on the site for two weeks, or until the deadline for an event. They are also compiled into an e-mail every two weeks, and circulated to members as an e-mail “Community Update”.
If you would like to include an item in this section, click on the option “Submit an Item” in the right column or in the “Feedback” page and follow the instructions to complete the e-mail message form. Alternately, you can also e-mail the material directly to the Moderator. The Community Moderator will receive your message and upload the material on the website.
Send a feedback message, testimonial or impact story?
The “Feedback” tab on the orange menu bar offers four options, which open separate e-mail forms to complete. Use “Submit an item for the Update” to post an announcement to the Community (see above). Send us a “Testimonial” if you were impressed with our service or with member contributions to a query you posted, or send us an “Impact Story” relating an outcome you can attribute to Solution Exchange. We will feature these on the Home Page. Alternatively, use “Send us Feedback” to tell us about our performance or suggest how we might work better.
Ask for help?
One of the drop down menu options on the “How to Participate” on the orange menu bar is “ask us/tell us.” Click on this to send us a message if you need help with something or want to offer a suggestion.
Search for something?
Use the “Search” feature?
The “Knowledge on Demand” search enables users to search for any of Solution Exchange’s 540-plus Consolidated Replies. Simply enter a keyword in the field (replacing “consolidated replies”) and it will produce a list of all Consolidated Replies with the search term in the subject or in the two-line abstract. You can refine the search using the terms in the “search box” in the center panel, or you can click on any of the “PDF” links to open up the complete Consolidated Reply.
The Solution Exchange Home page will search for Consolidated Replies across all Communities. If you are on a Community homepage, the search covers that Community’s Consolidated Replies.
Use the “Browse” feature?
Clicking on “Browse Consolidated Replies” produces the full list of all Consolidated Replies, by date issued. Browse from the Solution Exchange Home Page produces all the Consolidated Replies; browse from a Community home page produces Consolidated Replies from that Community.
Find another member?
Solution Exchange encourages members to connect with each other off-line. Unless you asked not to reveal your contact information (e-mail address or phone – see the Privacy Policy), members will be able to e-mail or call you using the Member List. A member list that only includes members’ names, organizations, organization type, and locations is available to non-members on the public site, to let viewers know who has joined the Community. You can also request that your name be omitted from this list (inform the Moderator).
To find a Community member click on the “View Members” in the left Navigation Bar of a Community home page and the member list will open. You can then use the features provided to search through the membership database.
Find an item in the “update”?
To find an item in a Community “Update” simply click the respective link in the Community Update, in the right Navigation Bar. The results will show in the center panel.
| Get the most out of Solution Exchange | | Protect my privacy? |
Keep personal information private? Solution Exchange’s Privacy Policy is designed to encourage members to share contact information but to keep any contact information hidden from the public. Only logged in members can access contact information (e-mails, phone numbers and addresses). Non-members only have access to the public member list that only includes members name, organization, organization type, and location. We also have two versions of our Consolidated Replies – the ones circulated to members included links to member’s e-mail addresses, but the ones published in the public repository (the website search facility) have all member e-mails removed.
The Privacy Policy states that you can (upon request) keep all personal information hidden not only from publicly available sites but also from other Community members. If you prefer not to reveal your email id, gender, and/or contact information, we will leave it out of our mail lists.
Participate anonymously?
We allow members to post or respond to queries anonymously. If for any reason you do not want your name included in a query or a response, simply tell the Moderator and the message will be posted as an “anonymous” contribution.
Prevent my e-mail address from being given to other mailing lists?
Members who “harvest” the names on our member list to post unsolicited messages are contravening the Membership Agreement, and their subscriptions are cancelled. If you find a member doing this, please report it to the Moderator.
Respect intellectual property?
Make sure I get credit for my contributions?
Posting ideas, examples and solutions on a space sponsored by the United Nations brings them into the public domain. In order to ensure that contributors are sufficiently recognized for their ideas and innovations, Solution Exchange has a “Creative Commons” license. Creative Commons offers a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors and artists, building upon the "all rights reserved" of traditional copyright to create a voluntary "some rights reserved" copyright. This form of licensing, used by “Open Content” advocates worldwide, allows authors and artists to determine the terms and conditions for sharing their intellectual property. For more information on the Creative Commons concept, visit their site at http://creativecommons.org.
The Creative Commons license for Solution Exchange is “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5”. This license lets others build upon your work, except for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. All new works based on yours will carry the same license. This simply means that if you got an idea or material from Solution Exchange, you should give the original contributor credit, and if you further develop this idea or material, you should return the favor and post it on Solution Exchange as well. "Non-commercial" means that you can use the work for non-profit purposes only, unless you get permission from Solution Exchange and the original contributor.
An Open Content model means that instead of profiting from the sale of your work, you profit from the fact that your name stays associated with the work. An Open Content approach is also in keeping with the spirit of Solution Exchange – by sharing rather than protecting your intellectual property, you are widening the field of professional peers who give recognition to your ideas, thereby enhancing your status and reputation.
A Creative Commons License is a legally binding copyright instrument, and ensures that members are always duly credited for their contributions. If you find that a contribution or resource you provided to Solution Exchange shows up on another site or have been used by another person without acknowledgement, please inform your Moderator, and we will take it up.
Make sure other members get proper credit for their contributions?
If you want to cite a member’s contribution and/or a Consolidated Reply Summary in a work you are creating, simply quote “…from [member name], in Solution Exchange Consolidated Reply, [subject], [issue date]. Download: [URL]"
Use the Community for collaborative assignments?
Tapping Communities of Practice for collaborative assignments, such as product development, is becoming increasingly common – following the concept spearheaded by Linux and open source computer applications. In their 2006 book “Wikinomics”, authors Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams make the case that collaborative, trust-based relationships are more effective at getting work done than traditional hierarchy-based relationships. Solution Exchange Communities offer a natural forum for collaboration and innovation, and members are encouraged to use it in this way. This being said, no instrument yet exists to reward Community contributions to commercially viable products, and this is the reason behind the “non-commercial” aspect of our Creative Commons license. However, Solution Exchange would like to help develop such an instrument, to add more value to Community membership. If you have ideas, or represent a for-profit company and would like to tap a Community for product development, please contact your Moderator.
Follow good mailgroup “Netiquette”?
Make sure my messages are appropriate for the Community?
When sending a message to your colleagues through the mail group please uses the following guidelines:
- Make your message concise, thought provoking and to the point. Don't send contributions longer than a screen.
- The first sentence of your message should summarize the content of your contribution or should reference the discussion to which you are referring.
- Do not raise new issues for discussion while contributing to a discussion or responding to a query. This can result in fragmentation of the discussion. New queries or discussion issues should be sent in a new separate message.
- If you provide a lengthy attachment, please send it as a zip file. Many members use dial-up lines and find it inconvenient to download large files.
- Include your name, office and location at the end, to make it easy for other members to know who you are.
When sending a Query to the mail group, please also pay close attention to the following:
- Include in the subject heading a descriptive title relating to the issue being raised. A descriptive subject heading that clearly identifies the content of discussion will help other members to determine quickly whether a message is of interest to them.
- Do a search of the discussion archives on the website. You might find that your query has already been covered in a previous exchange. All past queries are available in the mail group archives.
- After receiving the Consolidated Reply to your Query, don’t hesitate to spend a few minutes to send a short thank you directly to everyone that contributed.
When replying to a member’s Query:
- Keep the same subject heading, to ensure your message stays in the thread connected to the original Query.
- Send a response that may not be of interest to the entire community directly to the e-mail address of the person sending the Query, instead of using the “reply” function (which will direct your message to the whole mailgroup).
In all cases, your Moderator is available to help you frame queries and responses clearly and constructively.
Make sure my query is clear?
It is not easy to formulate a well-framed, interesting query, which will get you many relevant responses. If you follow these four steps, you can create a request so compelling that even the busiest Community members will respond.
Part 1: The Context. Tell members who you are and why you are seeking their help. Make sure you have an important enough reason for asking your question that very busy people will want to take time and effort to help you out.
Part 2: The Issue. Here is where you lay out the challenge you face. Provide enough information to give members a clear picture of the situation, so that they can offer a relevant reply.
Part 3: The Question Statement. Here you must
- Be clear and direct, so that responders know what exactly is being asked
- Be concise, so that it does not take time to read and understand
- Be easy to respond to, so that responders will react by hitting the “reply” button right away.
If you have multiple parts to your question, do not have more than 3-4 points. Use bullets, not numbering.
There are four types of question statements: seeking experiences (stories), examples (models), referrals (contacts), and advice (suggestions). Which one is yours? Make sure you include this in your text.
Part 4: The Close. Add final words that lend a personal touch, such as thanking members in advance for their help.
Your Moderator is skilled at query formulation, and is always available to help.
Participate in languages other than English?
Send messages in other languages?
If you prefer sending a response in a non-English language, feel free to do so. We will post it with a “moderator’s note” summarizing the key points in English. We would like to encourage more respondents to reply in their own language. If there is sufficient demand, we will also translate the Query and Consolidated Reply Summary. We currently have a Hindi-English pilot with the Decentralization Community, which we intend to expand along these lines.
Read translated Consolidated Replies?
We do not translate all Consolidated Replies, although the Decentralization Community is piloting a Hindi version of the Consolidated Reply summary. We find that some members for circulation to their non-English speaking colleagues are translating the Consolidated Replies. If you are translating Consolidated Replies into other languages please send the Moderator a copy to store in our Archive
