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Blog: Welcome Eric to the CS team!  
Hello!

Please extend a warm welcome to the newest member of our Care2 Support team. Eric joined the team about 2 weeks ago and is coming up to speed quickly. We are so excited to have him on the team and we hope you will all get a chance to get acquainted in the near future. He will be holding down the fort while Michon and I are away at the Green Festival in Seattle this weekend. Please go easy on him...we want him to stay!!

A little about Eric...he loves music. Pretty much everything about it. Writing, producing, listening, dreaming music. He lives with roommates that have been influencing him to live a healthier, greener lifestyle and he's thankful for it.

 on behalf of all the staff here at Care2 and all the members of the community who are thankful for your assistance.

 
Posted: Apr 10, 2008 5:24pm | comment (12) | discuss (0) | permalink
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Tags: welcome   staff   support   eric  
Blog: New Care2 Email Interface Coming Soon!  
Update 4/8/2008:  The mail migration took place last week.  If this is your first visit back to your account since the migration, it may take up to 10 minutes for your mail to trickle into your account.  Please be patient.  Once in your account, you can change the layout of the page to your preference.  Look for the small white icons at the top right of your inbox, click on these to switch the layout from a horizontal split screen to vertical or remove the split screen altogether.  For more tips and tricks, check out this discussion thread.

Update 3/19/2008: Migration delayed for a week. Please check back soon for more definite details about when this migration will take place.

Dear Valued User:
We’re excited to announce that we will launch our all-new Care2 email interface on Thursday, March 20, 2008.

Making the Switch
First of all, we want to assure you that the transition from your existing Care2 email interface will be completely transparent and seamless. All your messages, settings, folders, etc. will be transferred with no loss of data. The transition will occur over a few days, so to make sure you have access to your mail, we’re giving priority to users who login to their email account during that time.

New Look, New Features
Meanwhile, you can look forward to a sleek, modernized email interface and many terrific new features designed to enhance usability, enrich your email experience and help boost your email productivity. Everything in the list below is included in your new Care2 email account:

1. Outlook-like Interface: Familiar, intuitive and sophisticated, the new look and-feel was inspired by elements of the ever-popular Outlook.
2. Message Reading Pane: A convenient, resizable preview window with three views to choose from.
3. QuickReply: An easy way to send a short email response on the fly, this handy tool was inspired by the popular Mozilla Thunderbird email application.
4. Quick Sender Search: Mouseover a sender’s name in a message to view a convenient dropdown menu of options.
5. Attachment Manager: More options for handling attachments, such as forwarding individual attachments and sending an attachment itself through email.
6. Contacts 2.0: This amazing upgrade includes Google® maps, online calling connections, keyword tags, easy import/export and plenty more great ways to organize your contacts.
7. 24-hour Time Stamp: Each message in the Inbox will now display the time it was received. Beyond 24 hours, the time stamp reverts to a date stamp.
8. Fraud Protection: Your account is now protected by an advanced fraud protection program that detects and intercepts phishing schemes and other fraudulent messages before they reach your Inbox.
9. Right-click Functionality: This AJAX-inspired feature adds desktop-like functionality to the new Care2.org email interface.
10. Address Auto Complete: When you begin typing an address previously entered into the Address field, the system now “remembers” that address and assists you with its completion.
11. Online Image Viewer: Just one click on an image attachment opens a large viewing window where you can zoom, rotate, save and more.

Getting Ready
As the March 20th launch date approaches, our Support team may contact you with further details about switching to the new service.

Watch for more exciting new features in the near future!
The Care2 Team

 
Posted: Mar 18, 2008 1:36pm | comment (229) | discuss (0) | permalink
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Tags: new   email   Interface   upgrade  
Blog: Care2's Flaming Policy  
Flaming Policy

What is a Flamer?

"Flaming is the hostile and insulting interaction between Internet users. Flaming usually occurs in the social context of a discussion board, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) or even through e-mail. An Internet user typically generates a flame response to other posts or users posting on a site, and is usually not constructive, does not clarify a discussion, and does not persuade others. Sometimes, flamers attempt to assert their authority, or establish a position of superiority over other users. Other times, a flamer is simply an individual who believes he or she carries the only valid opinion. This leads him or her to personally attack those who disagree. Occasionally, flamers wish to upset and offend other members of the forum, in which case they are trolls. Most often however, flames are angry or insulting messages transmitted by people who have strong feelings about a subject." --Wikipedia

Even having defined a flamer, it is important to remember that every case is different. Therefore, deciding who is or isn't a flamer, and how that contributor will be dealt with, is at the final and sole discretion of the Care2 staff.

This is also made clear in our Terms of Service. By creating an account, you are agreeing to abide by our Terms of Service. This means, of course, that you have chosen to abide by this policy.

Types of Flamers

Humans have always loved insulting one another, and on the Web this seems to be especially true. Here are three kinds of Flamers:

Garden Variety Flamers - Your average flamer is often very good at reading and attacking other users where it hits hardest (values, family, background). Flamers do not necessarily subscribe to the point of view they are touting, but they will defend it whole-heartedly. They lead with their passions first and their reason later (if at all).

Baiters - Most baiters tend to seek out other flamers with the intent of exploiting an already volatile personality and/or situation. However, a baiter may also be accidental, unconsciously starting a flame war simply by engaging a flamer (flames are easy to stoke).

Trolls - As mentioned earlier, trolls are users whose sole purpose in joining a discussion is to anger or incite the parties involved. They don't invest in the conversation or care about discourse; they come in to take the place down. They target and pick off people at will.

Etiquette

Use the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would like to be treated. Use common sense at all times, and if you don't have any then here are a few helpful hints:

- Be polite, civil and respectful.
- Appreciate that text comes without tone, subtlety, facial cues or body language.
- If you must argue, make it about facts and figures, not people and personalities (it’s the post, not the poster).
- Avoid sweeping statements (ie: 'All Americans are ignorant;' 'Women are not as strong as men,' etc.).
- Take the high road; if you're being flamed, don't be a baiter.
- Recognize that you, too, have biases and bring them to light.
- Be realistic; your opinion is not likely to change because of a comment, so why would you fight to change someone else's?


Spotting Flamers

First, determine whether you are really being flamed:
· The flamer attacks you personally (calling you names, being aggressive or threatening to you, making sweeping statements about you and/or your beliefs).
· The flamer ignores your attempts to respond to their accusations.
· The flamer presents his/her opinion as the only correct one.
· The flamer makes a statement or poses a question that seems hateful, abusive, inflammatory or racist or otherwise serves to marginalize a person or persons, or generalizes about a person or persons.
· The flamer makes a personal statement or poses a personal question that makes you uncomfortable or angry.

If you're unsure whether you're being flamed or not, contact our support team. Include a link and we'll determine whether action is warranted.

Diffusing the Situation

There are some steps you can take to diffuse the situation.
1. Ignore them - This is the most effective way to discourage a flamer; flamers crave baiters. Ignoring them will likely cause them to go away, and will allow us to see if they're habitual flamers or just responding to a subject they feel passionate about.
2. Respond reasonably - Sometimes, if you present a rational, reasoned, respectful retort to their flame, they will sidelined by it. More often than not, however, they will see it as bait and choose to continue the war.
3. Disengage - Step back and let the issue sit. Many times this will cause the flame to die out. If you get angry, you risk becoming a baiter.

Putting Out the Flame

Once a user has been pinpointed as a flamer by our staff (one or more instances of obvious flaming, and/or reported flaming from other site users), here's what we will do, in order:
1. Send the user a warning indicating that they're at risk of losing their account. This may or may not be accompanied by a temporary suspension depending on the situation.  Sometimes we may post a comment in the thread so that users will know we are dealing with the situation, but may sometimes choose not to if we don't want to call attention to it.
2. Observe the user for reform or response. If the user reforms or responds and apologizes, they will be given another chance.
3. If they refuse to do so, we will revoke their status or block their account, whichever we deem more appropriate for the situation. The blocked user is not invited back to Care2.

In Closing

This bears repeating: Determining whether someone is a Flamer is at the sole discretion of Care2 staff. Problematic behavior will be dealt with if and when we deem it necessary.

Care2 is a community that values openness and intelligent discourse. Hate speech and abusive or inflammatory behavior is not needed to get your point across. Act like adults and you will be treated as such. Care2's staff hopes to help you make the most and the best of this experience in a way that allows others to have a good experience too.

Thank you.
Kristen
Care2 Support

 
Posted: Feb 29, 2008 12:03pm | comment (10) | discuss (0) | permalink
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Tags: abuse   flaming   policy   *groups:feedback*  
Blog: New Footer for Care2  
Announcement! To help make it easier for you to make a difference, we’ve launched a new footer across Care2. This new footer offers quick links to the pages you visit most and an easy to use search to help you find something new.

Here's a screenshot!


global footer

Below the quick links and search, there's room for some ads. These ads help Care2 continue its mission to make the world a better place (and keep it free for you). At the very bottom you'll find the same trusty links that were in our previous footer. We hope this new footer will help make it easier for you to Make a Difference with Care2.


 
Posted: Feb 8, 2008 2:02pm | comment (1) | discuss (0) | permalink
Visibility: Everyone
Tags: child   seal   support   improvements   federal   amendment   bradley   screenshot   custody   navigation   upgrades   footer  
Poll: Themes - How do you use them?  

Do you currently use Care2 themes for your MyPage, Shares, and/or Groups? Have checked out the different background themes available? If yes, please help us with this brief survey to tell us how you use the themes.

Take this poll! (234 responses)

 
Posted: Nov 27, 2007 10:18am | comment (8) | discuss (0) | permalink
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Tags: blog   shares   themes  
Blog: Check out the Daily Action Site  
Hello!

We are happy to announce some big improvements to our Daily Action pages...

dailyaction


Not only did the pages get a much needed face-lift but users were also given some new tools...

Daily Action Newsletters - Get important updates delivered straight to your inbox!

newsletter

Daily Action Suggestions - Have an idea for a future daily action? Please share your ideas with us!



The Recent Daily Actions page has been updated as well...

recent


Big thank you to all of our users who requested these new features. Enjoy!

Sincerely,
Kristen
Care2 Support

 
Posted: Oct 30, 2007 4:39pm | comment (0) | discuss (0) | permalink
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Tags: action   daily   support   update   announcement   upgrade  
Blog: Unexpected Site Outage 9/28/07  

Hello,

We experienced an unexpected outage earlier today when some of our networking hardware failed.  This failure did not affect our data storage or your account information in any way.  We have restored the website, however, you may notice some lag time while we get things back to speed.  We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,
Kristen
Care2 Support

 
Posted: Sep 28, 2007 1:46pm | comment (42) | discuss (0) | permalink
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Blog: Are online petitions effective?  
Yes - Often, but the answer really depends on a number of factors. In general, the more a target organization is impacted by public opinion, the more effective are the petitions. In addition, ThePetitionSite enhances the credibility of online petitions by centralizing signature collection, structuring/regulating signature data collection and output, facilitating communication of petitions via fax, email, etc. and by using fraud-reduction technology. Remember - the effect of a petition usually goes far beyond the actual list of signatures. Journalists write stories about the petitions, signers get inspired to take additional actions, and other "potential targets" conform their behavior to avoid being a target.

Most of all, petitions help build awareness in the community. They spread the word about important issues to those who otherwise might never have known about them. We must educate others to help them make responsible changes in their lives.

"They are undeniably an excellent way to raise the visibility of a cause." ~Kate Golden, Assistant Editor of onPhilanthropy.com

If a petition is successful, it will be listed on the petition after it closes. You'll see a message similar to this one:

"This petition has succeeded! Dec 14, 2005 — On September 28th, the House passed H.R. 3402, a Department of Justice Reauthorization bill that incorportated several VAWA provisions by a vote of 415- 4. Then on October 4th, the Senate passed VAWA S. 1197 by unanimous consent. The last step is for the two versions to be reconciled. Thank you for all of your hard work!"

For most of our nonprofit petitions, we arrange real-time delivery of signatures by email, web form and fax. For government officials who don't accept email from their constituents, we either submit the information through their web form or we send a fax. For citizen petitions, the authors take responsibility for delivery of the signatures.

Learn more about effective online advocacy in the Internet Advocacy Clinic. The group is no longer active but has some good topics in the archives. I'd love to see this group start-up again so you have anything to add to the discussions, please join and start posting.

 
Posted: Sep 24, 2007 1:39pm | comment (1) | discuss (0) | permalink
Visibility: Everyone
Tags: change   awareness   petitions   online   effective  
Blog: New Petitionsite Tools are Here!  
Attention petition authors! New tools have been made available to help you better manage and promote your petition. The petition owner's dashboard and the My Petitionsite pages have new designs...check them out:

Promote & Manage Petition Dashboard

Promote & Manage Petition Dashboard


My Petitionsite Page

My Petitionsite

The changes are live and can be found by going to the petitionsite and clicking on "my petitionsite". Click on the tabs to toggle from petition signed, to petitions authored. The tab on the right will bring you to more petitions to sign or share with friends. Enjoy!

Sincerely,
Kristen
Care2 Support

 
Posted: Sep 20, 2007 4:22pm | comment (6) | discuss (0) | permalink
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Tags: new   petitions   petitionsite   redesign  
Blog: Newest Member to Care2 Support  
We are excited to welcome our newest Care2 Support team member. Her name is Michon and she will be posting to the Feedback and Suggestions group in the near future. She is approaching the end of her second week at Care2 is catching on very quickly! Some of you may have already met Michon through the help form, she's been answering help requests and monitoring abuse reports. We are excited to have her here and hope you enjoy working with her too!

Here's a photo...

Michon on the rock

...from the picture you can tell she's loves rock climbing. She's also into camping, hiking, yoga and snowboarding. She also loves her furry friend Figaro...



figaro

...isn't he cute?!

 
Posted: Aug 23, 2007 4:49pm | comment (4) | discuss (0) | permalink
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Tags: team   help   member   new   support  

 
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Content and comments expressed here are the opinions of Care2 users and not necessarily that of Care2.com or its affiliates.

AUTHOR: KRISTEN G.

female
single
Redwood City, CA, USA
KRISTEN'S SHARES
Updated:
Blog 10 Apr 10, 2008
Poll 2 Nov 27, 2007

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SHARES FROM KRISTEN'S NETWORK
Oct 2
Blog: $10,000 for Your Favorite Animal Shelter by Randy P.
(4 comments  |  discussions ) — “We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals" said Immanuel Kant. I think he'd also have said there are lots of big hearts on Care2 judging from the fantastic comments being posted on our new animal shelter contest. Last week,... more
Sep 22
Blog: Visualizing Global Warming by Randy P.
(5 comments  |  discussions ) — I recently spent the weekend in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park.   We climbed high into the mountains and enjoyed spectacular views of snow capped mountains and verdant forests stretching as far as we could see.   As we... more
Sep 10
Blog: Sarah Palin by Randy P.
(54 comments  |  discussions ) — The mere mention of her name is sending many Care2 members into a frenzy.  Some love Sarah Palin and others... well, best to just jump in and see for yourself. The Care2 News Network (C2NN) has been abuzz since McCain's announcement of Palin as... more
Blog: Site Performance Update by Randy P.
(2 comments  |  discussions ) — It’s now been three weeks since we launched the site redesign.  Thank you to all of you who have sent such great feedback.  I realize the transition was a bit tough on some of you, but it seems like most everybody has figured out how ... more
Aug 29
Blog: Lots of Summertime Victories! by Randy P.
(12 comments  |  discussions ) — Children protected from tobacco, Phthalates banned in toys, and wolves saved in Montana – these are just a few of the successful campaigns Care2 members and partners have been involved in this summer.   Congratulations to all of you who ... more
Aug 22
Blog: Member Spotlight: Michael C., Denver, CO by Randy P.
(7 comments  |  discussions ) — Care2’s community powered News Network (C2NN) is a fantastic way to keep up on the most interesting stories of the day. What makes it work are passionate members who scour the web for great stories to post on C2NN, discuss and often vigorously ... more
Aug 19
Blog: New Look, Same Folks by Randy P.
(20 comments  |  discussions ) — Our new design is now live today after many months of planning and hard work. A big Thank You to the fantastic efforts of all the Care2 employees who poured their hearts and souls into making this a reality.  Changes were made to over 1,400 fi... more
Aug 18
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