Dear all,

I would like to inform you about a nice new feature of the SuSanA discussion forum which could be interesting for many of you.

The feature is a "contribute by e-mail functionality": You can now send an e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and it would end up here (after a manual spam control): http://forum.susana.org/forum/recent

Thus, you can now make a posting on the forum even if you have forgotten your login name or password for SuSanA. Perhaps you have registered for SuSanA a long time ago but you cannot remember your login and password. Or you couldn't be bothered to login again each time you want to write on the forum. Or you may wish to write a posting while you are offline (e.g. in a plane) and then send it immediately when you are online.

For all these cases, you can now simply write an e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and your post-by-e-mail will be transmitted to the SuSanA discussion forum (for this to work you must have registered once in your lifetime with SuSanA prior to sending the e-mail). If you don't have a SuSanA login yet, you can get it here: www.susana.org/register.

And what's new on the forum? Well, for example we* recently moved 164 postings from the old Sanitation Network of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation into the open space on the forum here:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/96-inn...-technology-exchange
Maybe you want to join in the conversation there?

* Under the direction of Arno Rosemarin from Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), a small team consisting of several SuSanA members are working over the next 13 months to transition the current members and content from the Sanitation Network into a new category in the SuSanA Forum.

I wish you all a happy new year and lots of sanitation successes in 2013!

Regards,
Elisabeth

P.S. I just noticed that as of today, we have 2000 registered members for this discussion forum - this is a big milestone! Thank you all for your support, interest and contributions! And a special welcome to Lyn, the 2000th member who joined today.

Dear Elisabeth,

Thank you for the good news, it sounds practical. I still have few questions about this new functionality. I didn't understand if the posts sent by mail will be all in the same, probably new category or they will be allocated to the category where they belong. Will there be a way to differentiate new topics from replies?

Kind regards,
Cecília.

P.S.: The link I suppose is for the new category is not working.

Dear Cecilia,

Thanks for your questions. The process is this: when a post is sent by e-mail, it first lands in a category that is hidden from view. Only the moderators can see it. The moderators check this category daily (in fact some of us get alerted by an e-mail that a new posting has arrived). We then check it and move it to the right category - and then it becomes visible to all. Or, if it is a reply to an existing thread, we move it there. The aim is to have a response time of 24 hours. By having several moderators, this will be quite possible.
(of course, any spam and plain advertising would be deleted and not made public)

I have fixed that link above (there was a fullstop at the end which interfered). It was just a link to the "recent topics" page.

So far, nobody has used the new functionality. For anyone who wonders how it works and whether it is convenient: just try it out and see what happens. Just send your post to:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it (from the same e-mail address which you had previously used to register for SuSanA). And then see what happens.

Kind regards,
Elisabeth

Dear Elisabeth,

I highly welcome this functionality. However it seems not yet to be as easy as to simply click on a button "reply by email" or similar. For example if I get the digest and want to reply to a certain post - would I have open a new email, copy the title of the post that I want to reply to and then send it to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ? Right?

Anyways very good work you are all doing in managing the forum. Congrats!!!

Cheers
Christian

Actually we have now integrated the "reply by e-mail" function inside of the digest, like you suggested, Christian.

There could still be some technical hiccups depending on the e-mail client that you use and maybe some other settings, but please do try it out and if there are problems, then please e-mail the secretariat, and further improvements can be made ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

Please also see here my other post on some more information about the new digest function which has been much improved and was launched two days ago:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/3-sugg...12&start=12#3331

Example how the new forum digest looks like in a Gmail e-mail account (note the text in blue "click here to reply by e-mail" directly under the green title of the post):