The Lindenlea Listserv has been running for the past twenty five years under the watchful eye of John Verdon. John has volunteered many hours to help grow and maintain our community list. This email list is open to all residents of Lindenlea and surrounding neighbourhoods. To join the list please email John at [email protected]
Please read our listserv rules and John's 25th anniversary post below to find out more information!
Please read our listserv rules and John's 25th anniversary post below to find out more information!
Listserv Rules
Welcome to the Lindenlea Listserv
The list has been operating since 2001.
It is a form of public commons.
It is a non-profit service for community members and non-profit organizations.
It is intended to help sustain and steward a sense of Local community, and to provide a means of communication in the spirit of strengthening how local residents in our local neighborhoods can connect with one another. Its aims are very humble - to enable simple, useful, exchanges that foster a recognition of our neighbors as our neighbors in a local community.
The Listserv is Not a social media platform for sharing personal information - or venting a frustration - or advocating a political or moralizing point of view. Using the listserv for expressing personal views - invites response from those who agree or disagree or have many shades of discernment.
Also, it is NOT a platform for advertising, marketing or self-promotion - personal, political or commercial.
The nature of the listserv is that our data is not shared with third parties or ever accessible to others except those on the list. Members using email addresses from the listserv for marketing will be banned.
Please be mindful that we are posting to our neighbours.
Show each other respect and courtesy in ways that generate the community you wish for your children. Considered expression is valued.
Posting to the listserv is simple - Just send an email to [email protected]
Every post to the listserv goes to every member's inbox.
The listserv only recognizes email addresses - so only posts from the email address you subscribe with will be recognized and forwarded to everyone - posts from another email will be considered from a non-member and deleted.
Please keep this email for reference.
Any admin requests such as adding someone else or unsubscribing - Please send the request directly to [email protected]
What do people use the list for?
Most often, to:
- offer items for sale, for trade or for free
- seek to purchase items.
- solicit recommendations for tradespersons, services, sharing, etc.
- advise of lost or found items: glasses, keys, pets, etc.
- alert neighbors to criminal or suspicious behaviour
- alert member of local events
The Listserv and the LCA cannot take responsibility for issues arising between members of the listserv - including issues related to buying and selling items.
The list may be used for discussions relevant to community interests:
- to organize neighborhood events, comment on local issues, etc.
Discussions can spark interesting and constructive conversations, and may also elicit strong reactions.
Please remain civil
Take your discussions off-list among interested parties rather than bombard all users with niche messages.
The "reply-all" function
Use it sparingly - “unless your response will be valuable to everyone
Most replies should by directly to the poster.
Practice vigilance, but also forgiveness.
We all will accidentally hit Reply-all, probably more than once.
List etiquette
Use subject lines wisely - A clear statement of purpose such as
Looking for, Selling a, Sold, Gone, etc.
If it's a long message, say so up front.
No posting commercial ads, personal marketing, self-promotion and similar spam.
Exceptions include: local children & young people offering babysitting or lawn-care services, etc.; non-profit fundraising pop-ups; notices of community events, etc.
Please do not post for friends - the Listserv is not a Kijiji platform - if people live in the local area they can join this or other local listservs and participate in this community service.
Make it easy to reply off-list:
include your name, email address and any other relevant contact info
in the body of your message.
Minimize messages and message sizes:
even if you're selling the entire contents of your house, send a single message with a list of items.
Consider creating a Dropbox or similar place to direct interested parties rather than attaching many large photos.
Share information succinctly
If you are collecting recommendations for a profession or service other users may want the same info.
Consider summarizing your findings concisely in a message to the list.
If you want to alert neighbors of attempted break-ins, etc.,
Be careful about sharing sensitive details.
Report any theft, attempted theft or property damage to
the police non-emergency line (613) 236-1222.
Some principles to consider:
First - when a serious incident arises - Please contact the police and share what evidence has been gathered with them.
Second - only after reporting to police and/or other relevant services and based on their advice - share relevant photos.
Third - limit the re-sharing (reply-all) between listservs, and each other unless it is new information. Do not add 'accelerants' or inflammatory opinions or comments.
The listserv - like our society - is a work-in-progress - an evolving commons. We all learn about it as we use it. Exercise common sense and common courtesy.
You're going to encounter messages and views you don't care about or care passionately about.
Remember deleting is a 21st century skill.
Members who breach the guidelines may have their posts moderated.
The Lindenlea Listserv managers reserve the right to determine who can join, and when it deems appropriate, the right to remove members from the Listserv for engaging in abusive interactions or Hate speech or repeated inappropriate, incendiary or inflammatory comments and interactions.
State of the Listserv on the 25th Anniversary
Hello everyone,
This is a special announcement to mark the 25th anniversary of the Lindenlea Listserv. It is longer than my normal Listserv announcements. I want to provide a brief history, a summary of current issues and outline some future possibilities.This email will also be an article in a forthcoming Lindenleader and the basis for a celebratory event at the Rideau-Rockcliffe Community Resource Centre that serves Ward 13 (January 27th - see details at the end). Please feel free to share this email with anyone you think would be interested.
A brief history
The inspiration for the Listserv was founded on my experience with the Lindenlea Community Association (LCA). Lindenlea has been a community with significant community spirit since its early years. When the LCA incorporated as a non-profit corporation governed by a local board of directors one of the visions was to expand the community centre - our humble field house. For many reasons this vision was not able to be materialized.
However by the late 90s, the majority of the board of directors now had email. This then enabled the board and others to coordinate and organize to the extent that within a couple of years the board successfully organized the expansion of the community center. It became self-evident that when everyone had an email address it augmented the ability to coordinate and organization became easier, more convenient, more effective. I had contacted Magma Communications, an Ottawa-based Internet service provider to ask if they could host a listserv for free, for the LCA, a non-profit community organization. They agreed to host it for free. Then at the Christmas Sleigh Ride and Chili Dinner in 2000, we provided a ‘sign up sheet’ to gather email addresses of anyone who might be interested in becoming a member of a community Listserv (not many people understood what that was). Along with this list and with other addresses gathered from Lindenlea programs we were able to assemble 75 email addresses. The Lindenlea Listserv was launched in January 2001 with 75 members. The listserv may have been the first community listserv in Ottawa. Today we have 1,250+ members who include residents of Lindenlea, Manor Park, Rockcliffe Park, New Edinburg and Beechwood Village. In addition there are now other community listservs for Manor Park, New Edinburg and one in the ‘vertical village’ of 200 Rideau Terrace. All are flourishing.
I want to note that this is a wonderful ecology of community listservs. I think this ecology is a strength of healthy community social fabric. We enjoy more than one local community center or field-house and a variety of community networks. Each network affords a variety of interactions.
This social ecology is also fragile.
Today, living in our current space-time streams, we surf any number of overflows of information, interactions and turbulence. Our attention is a scarce resource in an infinite sea of demands on it.
One of the key lessons I've learned is that in times of crisis - we first look to those actually around us. When the social fabric we participate in is nurtured with honest civility, we nurture our 'social capital' as a community commons. And in this way we are more secure and better prepared - more response-able should a need arise. From the Ice-storm to Covid; from annual community clean-ups to seasons of gypsy-moth invasions; from daily exchanges and requests to changes in local planning and development - honest civic-information enriches and strengthens us to work and feel together in our community.
The guiding principle of the Lindenlea Listserv aims to contribute to this community spirit by providing a simple and humble way to interact with each other as humans - engaging on a simple level of common humanity. One person/family who's looking for something and another who can help.
As Jane Jacobs and Gandalf note:
Lowly, unpurposeful and random as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city’s wealth of public life may grow. – Jane Jacobs
I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay... small acts of kindness and love. - Gandalf Speaking to Galadriel about Bilbo
A Commons
Why should we understand the Listserv as a community commons?
A simple definition of a commons -
The commons are things that no one owns and are shared by everyone.
A listserv is a software application using a database of email addresses that enables an individual in a group to send an email to every address in the database by sending their email to one email address. The software then distributes the email to every address.
And in this way, a listserv is a sort of commons of email addresses available to every member to ask for the attention of every other member - without having to ask permission. A common listserv makes email communication amongst the members very convenient.
Every member owns their own email address. Email has become a fundamental interface with our digital world (along with text-chat features on our mobiles and social media platforms). Every member uses their personal email to manage communications with their own network of relationships.
A listserv also competes with all other email traffic that each member receives. And so convenience inevitably leads to problems of ‘congestion’.
To mitigate congestion we have all learned that ‘delete’ is a 21st Century skill - which in turn depends on clear subject lines to let us know if a particular listserv post might be of interest to any particular member.
However, skill in deleting is not enough to mitigate the congestion of demands on our attention. This is why it is important to consider other people’s attention and inbox-clutter by mindful use of ‘Reply-All’ and refraining from using the listserv as a way to ‘chat with neighbors’. The listserv offers us a ‘well’ for drawing on the commons of our neighbors attention and to steward trust that the attention members offer will be for good purposes. Like any commons that can be vulnerable to misuse and rules of use become self-evident.
And so the Lindenlea Listserv aspires to be a modest civil digital commons asking for good faith and fair regard to support a healthy community spirit. The listserv is one simple element contributing to a complex social ecology.
For anyone interested in understanding the nature of a commons, an excellent place to start is a book by David Bollier “Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons”.
Evolving Guidelines
In the early years, the listserv had no formal guidelines other than a first principle aimed at protecting the listserv from the widespread incursion of spam and marketing. In 2001, spam was a very significant problem for any email-based application. Thus, the first principle was to serve a maintenance, growth and flourishing of community spirit as a trusted source of neighbor and community interaction. To support this first principle there would be no commercial ads, marketing, self-promotion - so that Listserv members would not become products for delivery or become an emulation of a mall serving as a site for commercial vendors to set up their shops.
Inevitably as the listserv grew in membership, issues arose and it became evident that formal guidelines were required in order to maintain the listserv as a positive service promoting community spirit. And so our guidelines continue to evolve to shape clarity in what a listserv can provide to promote a sense of community spirit.
Key in the evolution of the Listserv was clarifying the listserv as a type of public commons serving community and public purposes and therefore it cannot function like a social media platform. While it can enable the sharing of public and civic information, it is less fit for the purpose of general discussion of local or other issues. Also important was the need to clarify the nature of civil speech, and the care involved in protecting its community and public purpose.
To this end the listserv guidelines continue to evolve:
It is a form of public commons.
It is a non-profit service for local community members and local public non-profit organizations.
It is intended to help sustain and steward a generative sense of local community, and to provide a means of communication in the spirit of strengthening how local residents in our local neighborhoods can connect with one another. Its aims are very humble - to enable simple, useful, exchanges that foster a recognition of our neighbors as our neighbors in a local community. And enabling local public community organizations to communicate with local residents.
In addition to Not being a social media platform it is important that the Listserv is not for sharing personal information - or venting a frustration or grievance - or advocating a political or a moralizing point of view. Or for seeking followers.
This guideline has been the result of a great deal of experience. Literally everyone has a complaint they genuinely feel is serious. If the listserv becomes a vehicle for grievances it will no longer be able to fulfill its very humble aims - to enable simple, useful, exchanges that foster a recognition of our neighbors as our neighbors in a local community.
Everyone has access to a media-landscape, networks and expert sources for their personal, professional and political interests and for Canadian and world news.
The listserv works best when we focus on our local situation and conditions and the important local information we can share with others.
And as a commons of community members attention for stewarding community spirit and trust. The Listserv is NOT a platform for advertising, marketing or self-promotion - for personal or political purposes or private and commercial organizations.
Governance
Guidelines are impotent without their fair implementation. And fair implementation requires honest and fair refereeing. The role of referee has four basic tools to steward the listserv as a commons: a personal reply, a state of the listserv general announcement, moderation, and banning.
In its 25 year history, only two people have ever been banned for inability to abide with the guidelines.
The role of referee is generally not fun and I think it shouldn’t be. It really is attending to how the three other tools should be used and when. A good referee has to respect the imperative to be fair to all as a condition for all to respect the guidelines. A good referee has to be fair and honest in error. And of course - ‘It’s complicated’. Because members of the listserv are my neighbors. And enacting that role is a privilege of a place, that always offers an opportunity to be your wisest self and that’s why it's hard. And a good referee is never a perfect referee.
A good referee has to pay attention to ‘the game’ and the rules. Often all that is needed is a personal reply pointing out the issue. Occasionally what is most helpful is a broader comment to all members - like the ‘State of the Listserv’ posts.
Moderation is when a member receives all listserv posts and can reply directly to that post. However, their posts to the listserv are held until they are reviewed by the listserv manager. This is no fun to do. But it has been useful in keeping the listserv civil and aligned with its purpose.
About 5% of members are moderated.
Vigilantes
Using the listserv as a method of 'Neighborhood Watch' is totally legitimate. To create a community of trust we must be vigilant - not vigilantes.
Once a Scarlet Letter is cast upon one person - then any other person becomes vulnerable.
The listserv can strengthen our Response-Ability in protecting our freedom and security - when used to alerting our neighbors of an accident, or criminal incidents or other dangers is important.
However, it is equally important that we are careful in sharing pictures/videos and in our use of language (especially in these days of heightened social polarity). Warning of a possible suspicious character is much different than attributing criminal motivation along with a picture of an individual.
However, it is equally important that we are careful in sharing pictures/videos and in our use of language (especially in these days of heightened social polarity). Warning of a possible suspicious character is much different than attributing criminal motivation along with a picture of an individual.
I use the term 'scarlet letter' very seriously. In the early days of the listserv there were a few posters who were using it to rant against 'suspicious' people. Now with the technology at hand we must exercise care - even for things we care about.
And yes - we have all seen those video moments when public sharing is vital to holding authority to account. But those moments of sharing are better suited to social media platforms.
In the future
The listserv is a simple technology that serves a simple purpose well. However, the 21st century affords a number of new tools to augment community spirit and self-organization.
Toward this end a small group of younger people, and some elders (including myself), have initiated a project we call The Commons Fabric Project - Weaving the Local with the Virtual into the Practice of Community.
Important useful social digital tools for a community would include:
And equally important as the tools, we seek to formulate a model of how a community can govern-of-for-by itself - with these tools.
January 27, 2026
The Commons Fabric Project with the support of the Rideau Rockcliffe Community Resource Centre is hosting an event to celebrate the vitality of local social fabric including the flourishing of local listservs on the occasion of the Lindenlea Listserv’s 25th anniversary.
For anyone interested - details and registration can be found here
https://luma.com/vzmmi6ax
john
The list has been operating since 2001.
It is a form of public commons.
It is a non-profit service for community members and non-profit organizations.
It is intended to help sustain and steward a sense of Local community, and to provide a means of communication in the spirit of strengthening how local residents in our local neighborhoods can connect with one another. Its aims are very humble - to enable simple, useful, exchanges that foster a recognition of our neighbors as our neighbors in a local community.
The Listserv is Not a social media platform for sharing personal information - or venting a frustration - or advocating a political or moralizing point of view. Using the listserv for expressing personal views - invites response from those who agree or disagree or have many shades of discernment.
Also, it is NOT a platform for advertising, marketing or self-promotion - personal, political or commercial.
The nature of the listserv is that our data is not shared with third parties or ever accessible to others except those on the list. Members using email addresses from the listserv for marketing will be banned.
Please be mindful that we are posting to our neighbours.
Show each other respect and courtesy in ways that generate the community you wish for your children. Considered expression is valued.
Posting to the listserv is simple - Just send an email to [email protected]
Every post to the listserv goes to every member's inbox.
The listserv only recognizes email addresses - so only posts from the email address you subscribe with will be recognized and forwarded to everyone - posts from another email will be considered from a non-member and deleted.
Please keep this email for reference.
Any admin requests such as adding someone else or unsubscribing - Please send the request directly to [email protected]
What do people use the list for?
Most often, to:
- offer items for sale, for trade or for free
- seek to purchase items.
- solicit recommendations for tradespersons, services, sharing, etc.
- advise of lost or found items: glasses, keys, pets, etc.
- alert neighbors to criminal or suspicious behaviour
- alert member of local events
The Listserv and the LCA cannot take responsibility for issues arising between members of the listserv - including issues related to buying and selling items.
The list may be used for discussions relevant to community interests:
- to organize neighborhood events, comment on local issues, etc.
Discussions can spark interesting and constructive conversations, and may also elicit strong reactions.
Please remain civil
Take your discussions off-list among interested parties rather than bombard all users with niche messages.
The "reply-all" function
Use it sparingly - “unless your response will be valuable to everyone
Most replies should by directly to the poster.
Practice vigilance, but also forgiveness.
We all will accidentally hit Reply-all, probably more than once.
List etiquette
Use subject lines wisely - A clear statement of purpose such as
Looking for, Selling a, Sold, Gone, etc.
If it's a long message, say so up front.
No posting commercial ads, personal marketing, self-promotion and similar spam.
Exceptions include: local children & young people offering babysitting or lawn-care services, etc.; non-profit fundraising pop-ups; notices of community events, etc.
Please do not post for friends - the Listserv is not a Kijiji platform - if people live in the local area they can join this or other local listservs and participate in this community service.
Make it easy to reply off-list:
include your name, email address and any other relevant contact info
in the body of your message.
Minimize messages and message sizes:
even if you're selling the entire contents of your house, send a single message with a list of items.
Consider creating a Dropbox or similar place to direct interested parties rather than attaching many large photos.
Share information succinctly
If you are collecting recommendations for a profession or service other users may want the same info.
Consider summarizing your findings concisely in a message to the list.
If you want to alert neighbors of attempted break-ins, etc.,
Be careful about sharing sensitive details.
Report any theft, attempted theft or property damage to
the police non-emergency line (613) 236-1222.
Some principles to consider:
First - when a serious incident arises - Please contact the police and share what evidence has been gathered with them.
Second - only after reporting to police and/or other relevant services and based on their advice - share relevant photos.
Third - limit the re-sharing (reply-all) between listservs, and each other unless it is new information. Do not add 'accelerants' or inflammatory opinions or comments.
The listserv - like our society - is a work-in-progress - an evolving commons. We all learn about it as we use it. Exercise common sense and common courtesy.
You're going to encounter messages and views you don't care about or care passionately about.
Remember deleting is a 21st century skill.
Members who breach the guidelines may have their posts moderated.
The Lindenlea Listserv managers reserve the right to determine who can join, and when it deems appropriate, the right to remove members from the Listserv for engaging in abusive interactions or Hate speech or repeated inappropriate, incendiary or inflammatory comments and interactions.
State of the Listserv on the 25th Anniversary
Hello everyone,
This is a special announcement to mark the 25th anniversary of the Lindenlea Listserv. It is longer than my normal Listserv announcements. I want to provide a brief history, a summary of current issues and outline some future possibilities.This email will also be an article in a forthcoming Lindenleader and the basis for a celebratory event at the Rideau-Rockcliffe Community Resource Centre that serves Ward 13 (January 27th - see details at the end). Please feel free to share this email with anyone you think would be interested.
A brief history
The inspiration for the Listserv was founded on my experience with the Lindenlea Community Association (LCA). Lindenlea has been a community with significant community spirit since its early years. When the LCA incorporated as a non-profit corporation governed by a local board of directors one of the visions was to expand the community centre - our humble field house. For many reasons this vision was not able to be materialized.
However by the late 90s, the majority of the board of directors now had email. This then enabled the board and others to coordinate and organize to the extent that within a couple of years the board successfully organized the expansion of the community center. It became self-evident that when everyone had an email address it augmented the ability to coordinate and organization became easier, more convenient, more effective. I had contacted Magma Communications, an Ottawa-based Internet service provider to ask if they could host a listserv for free, for the LCA, a non-profit community organization. They agreed to host it for free. Then at the Christmas Sleigh Ride and Chili Dinner in 2000, we provided a ‘sign up sheet’ to gather email addresses of anyone who might be interested in becoming a member of a community Listserv (not many people understood what that was). Along with this list and with other addresses gathered from Lindenlea programs we were able to assemble 75 email addresses. The Lindenlea Listserv was launched in January 2001 with 75 members. The listserv may have been the first community listserv in Ottawa. Today we have 1,250+ members who include residents of Lindenlea, Manor Park, Rockcliffe Park, New Edinburg and Beechwood Village. In addition there are now other community listservs for Manor Park, New Edinburg and one in the ‘vertical village’ of 200 Rideau Terrace. All are flourishing.
I want to note that this is a wonderful ecology of community listservs. I think this ecology is a strength of healthy community social fabric. We enjoy more than one local community center or field-house and a variety of community networks. Each network affords a variety of interactions.
This social ecology is also fragile.
Today, living in our current space-time streams, we surf any number of overflows of information, interactions and turbulence. Our attention is a scarce resource in an infinite sea of demands on it.
One of the key lessons I've learned is that in times of crisis - we first look to those actually around us. When the social fabric we participate in is nurtured with honest civility, we nurture our 'social capital' as a community commons. And in this way we are more secure and better prepared - more response-able should a need arise. From the Ice-storm to Covid; from annual community clean-ups to seasons of gypsy-moth invasions; from daily exchanges and requests to changes in local planning and development - honest civic-information enriches and strengthens us to work and feel together in our community.
The guiding principle of the Lindenlea Listserv aims to contribute to this community spirit by providing a simple and humble way to interact with each other as humans - engaging on a simple level of common humanity. One person/family who's looking for something and another who can help.
As Jane Jacobs and Gandalf note:
Lowly, unpurposeful and random as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city’s wealth of public life may grow. – Jane Jacobs
I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay... small acts of kindness and love. - Gandalf Speaking to Galadriel about Bilbo
A Commons
Why should we understand the Listserv as a community commons?
A simple definition of a commons -
The commons are things that no one owns and are shared by everyone.
A listserv is a software application using a database of email addresses that enables an individual in a group to send an email to every address in the database by sending their email to one email address. The software then distributes the email to every address.
And in this way, a listserv is a sort of commons of email addresses available to every member to ask for the attention of every other member - without having to ask permission. A common listserv makes email communication amongst the members very convenient.
Every member owns their own email address. Email has become a fundamental interface with our digital world (along with text-chat features on our mobiles and social media platforms). Every member uses their personal email to manage communications with their own network of relationships.
A listserv also competes with all other email traffic that each member receives. And so convenience inevitably leads to problems of ‘congestion’.
To mitigate congestion we have all learned that ‘delete’ is a 21st Century skill - which in turn depends on clear subject lines to let us know if a particular listserv post might be of interest to any particular member.
However, skill in deleting is not enough to mitigate the congestion of demands on our attention. This is why it is important to consider other people’s attention and inbox-clutter by mindful use of ‘Reply-All’ and refraining from using the listserv as a way to ‘chat with neighbors’. The listserv offers us a ‘well’ for drawing on the commons of our neighbors attention and to steward trust that the attention members offer will be for good purposes. Like any commons that can be vulnerable to misuse and rules of use become self-evident.
And so the Lindenlea Listserv aspires to be a modest civil digital commons asking for good faith and fair regard to support a healthy community spirit. The listserv is one simple element contributing to a complex social ecology.
For anyone interested in understanding the nature of a commons, an excellent place to start is a book by David Bollier “Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons”.
Evolving Guidelines
In the early years, the listserv had no formal guidelines other than a first principle aimed at protecting the listserv from the widespread incursion of spam and marketing. In 2001, spam was a very significant problem for any email-based application. Thus, the first principle was to serve a maintenance, growth and flourishing of community spirit as a trusted source of neighbor and community interaction. To support this first principle there would be no commercial ads, marketing, self-promotion - so that Listserv members would not become products for delivery or become an emulation of a mall serving as a site for commercial vendors to set up their shops.
Inevitably as the listserv grew in membership, issues arose and it became evident that formal guidelines were required in order to maintain the listserv as a positive service promoting community spirit. And so our guidelines continue to evolve to shape clarity in what a listserv can provide to promote a sense of community spirit.
Key in the evolution of the Listserv was clarifying the listserv as a type of public commons serving community and public purposes and therefore it cannot function like a social media platform. While it can enable the sharing of public and civic information, it is less fit for the purpose of general discussion of local or other issues. Also important was the need to clarify the nature of civil speech, and the care involved in protecting its community and public purpose.
To this end the listserv guidelines continue to evolve:
It is a form of public commons.
It is a non-profit service for local community members and local public non-profit organizations.
It is intended to help sustain and steward a generative sense of local community, and to provide a means of communication in the spirit of strengthening how local residents in our local neighborhoods can connect with one another. Its aims are very humble - to enable simple, useful, exchanges that foster a recognition of our neighbors as our neighbors in a local community. And enabling local public community organizations to communicate with local residents.
In addition to Not being a social media platform it is important that the Listserv is not for sharing personal information - or venting a frustration or grievance - or advocating a political or a moralizing point of view. Or for seeking followers.
This guideline has been the result of a great deal of experience. Literally everyone has a complaint they genuinely feel is serious. If the listserv becomes a vehicle for grievances it will no longer be able to fulfill its very humble aims - to enable simple, useful, exchanges that foster a recognition of our neighbors as our neighbors in a local community.
Everyone has access to a media-landscape, networks and expert sources for their personal, professional and political interests and for Canadian and world news.
The listserv works best when we focus on our local situation and conditions and the important local information we can share with others.
And as a commons of community members attention for stewarding community spirit and trust. The Listserv is NOT a platform for advertising, marketing or self-promotion - for personal or political purposes or private and commercial organizations.
Governance
Guidelines are impotent without their fair implementation. And fair implementation requires honest and fair refereeing. The role of referee has four basic tools to steward the listserv as a commons: a personal reply, a state of the listserv general announcement, moderation, and banning.
In its 25 year history, only two people have ever been banned for inability to abide with the guidelines.
The role of referee is generally not fun and I think it shouldn’t be. It really is attending to how the three other tools should be used and when. A good referee has to respect the imperative to be fair to all as a condition for all to respect the guidelines. A good referee has to be fair and honest in error. And of course - ‘It’s complicated’. Because members of the listserv are my neighbors. And enacting that role is a privilege of a place, that always offers an opportunity to be your wisest self and that’s why it's hard. And a good referee is never a perfect referee.
A good referee has to pay attention to ‘the game’ and the rules. Often all that is needed is a personal reply pointing out the issue. Occasionally what is most helpful is a broader comment to all members - like the ‘State of the Listserv’ posts.
Moderation is when a member receives all listserv posts and can reply directly to that post. However, their posts to the listserv are held until they are reviewed by the listserv manager. This is no fun to do. But it has been useful in keeping the listserv civil and aligned with its purpose.
About 5% of members are moderated.
Vigilantes
Using the listserv as a method of 'Neighborhood Watch' is totally legitimate. To create a community of trust we must be vigilant - not vigilantes.
Once a Scarlet Letter is cast upon one person - then any other person becomes vulnerable.
The listserv can strengthen our Response-Ability in protecting our freedom and security - when used to alerting our neighbors of an accident, or criminal incidents or other dangers is important.
However, it is equally important that we are careful in sharing pictures/videos and in our use of language (especially in these days of heightened social polarity). Warning of a possible suspicious character is much different than attributing criminal motivation along with a picture of an individual.
However, it is equally important that we are careful in sharing pictures/videos and in our use of language (especially in these days of heightened social polarity). Warning of a possible suspicious character is much different than attributing criminal motivation along with a picture of an individual.
I use the term 'scarlet letter' very seriously. In the early days of the listserv there were a few posters who were using it to rant against 'suspicious' people. Now with the technology at hand we must exercise care - even for things we care about.
And yes - we have all seen those video moments when public sharing is vital to holding authority to account. But those moments of sharing are better suited to social media platforms.
In the future
The listserv is a simple technology that serves a simple purpose well. However, the 21st century affords a number of new tools to augment community spirit and self-organization.
Toward this end a small group of younger people, and some elders (including myself), have initiated a project we call The Commons Fabric Project - Weaving the Local with the Virtual into the Practice of Community.
Important useful social digital tools for a community would include:
- A capacity for community associations to have a communication platform more effective than email - for example something like a Discord or Slack or Zulip
- A yellow page to include local businesses and services
- A Community Wiki for recording history and local news
- A way to map local ‘assets’ - anything that a community comes to consider important and or valuable - everything from trees, knowledge, public spaces, etc.
- An easy to use website
And equally important as the tools, we seek to formulate a model of how a community can govern-of-for-by itself - with these tools.
January 27, 2026
The Commons Fabric Project with the support of the Rideau Rockcliffe Community Resource Centre is hosting an event to celebrate the vitality of local social fabric including the flourishing of local listservs on the occasion of the Lindenlea Listserv’s 25th anniversary.
For anyone interested - details and registration can be found here
https://luma.com/vzmmi6ax
john