Notices should be directly related to "professional psychotherapy." The number of messages would be overwhelming if we posted all the "off topic," but often interesting, notices about meditation, social action, spiritual healing, and so on.

It is becoming more difficult to forward messages to large lists of subscribers, so it requires the goodwill and cooperation of all our participants. We do our best to make it a helpful service. There is nothing automated about the list. We personally process every message sent.

The situation with spam has made the major ISPs (internet service providers) very aggressive about blocking spam. Because each message we "forward" goes to 500 individual addresses - it can look suspicious to the service providers. All this has only really become a major problem for us in the last year. We are looking for new software that might minimize this problem.

Things you can do to help.

1. If you get tired of receiving our emails, ask us to unsubscribe you and we'll do it immediately. Don't click the "this is spam" button or block our address. These actions are seen as "complaints" by the ISP. Once a certain number of complaints are registered, third party services (who collect this information) send our server address to the major ISPs (Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Comcast, etc) and they block all our messages to everyone. Then Reed has to call each one individually, fill out paperwork online, and generally convince them that we are not sending spam.

Please don't worry about our reactions to your unsubscribing -- we're always happy to put you back on later if you like. We can also put you on our personal list so that you receive only a small number of BPI announcements, including the annual networking party announcement.

2. Please make sure we are in your address book as bpi.training (at) boulderpsych.com and/or "whitelisted" on your list of approved correspondents. If any of our messages are diverted to your computer "junk mail folder" please identify them as "not junk email."

3. If you are going to be away and do not wish to receive messages, let us know and we'll take you off for that time and put you back on when you return.

4. Compose your announcements in "Plain Text." Pictures and HTML code are one of the major parameters that identify announcements as spam. They also greatly increase the bandwidth of outgoing mail and that can identify our server as a possible spam source.

5. Don't let your mailbox fill to capacity. Since we send out a fair number of messages this is probably partly our fault. However it also causes bounces (referred to as a "soft bounce") and contributes to our being identified as spam. For this reason, Reed always immediately removes addresses that bounce from our active list and puts them in a standby folder. If you receive no messages for over a week or so, this is probably what has happened. Just drop us an email or call Reed at 720 635 4428 and he'll re-add you.

Another reason you may cease to receive messages for several days is because your ISP is blocking us. When we receive these kind of bounced responses, we immediately move the address to a separate folder until the bounce is resolved. You can sometimes resolve the problem by "whitelisting" us and letting Reed know.

To post messages to the entire list (in "Plain Text" only) - send them to Reed at bpi.training (at) boulderpsych.com.

Place your announcement in the email body. Include the "subject line" you would like everyone to see. Include a brief line at the top of your message saying 'please post this'.

Again, we are not able to forward 'HTML'. Please format announcements as 'Plain Text'. You can usually do this by selecting 'Format' from your menu bar at the top of your browser and selecting 'Plain Text'. If you use a Mac, unselect 'HTML' before composing your message.

Your messages may be forwarded immediately or after a few days, so please give yourself extra time. If a posting is urgent, Reed does not mind if you alert him by leaving a message at 303 494 0393.

If we are going to be away and will be offline for a week or so, we'll let you know ahead of time.