Deciphering TheMouseForLess

WHERE ARE YOU FROM?
By Michael Boyer - 7/29/2001

This is the first installment of "Deciphering TheMouseForLess" and is prompted by the numerous recent posts asking "Where are you from?"

As many of you may have noticed, one thing everyone in this group loves (besides saving money and going to Disney) is getting to know everyone else and finding other members nearby to share ideas and excitement and maybe have local "meets" with. Every time we have a new surge in membership, it seems like over half of the posts are "getting to know you" and "where are you from" posts. To help assist this "community" building process, we have had several excellent ideas to help share information amongst members. The first involves three special Polls created back in February! These three WHERE ARE YOU FROM? Polls are continuous Polls (Different from our other polls which usually conclude after 1 or 2 weeks) and function as a type of Database mechanism collecting everyone who is from a particular US State or other part of the world. One of the things that makes these polls so special is that they take advantage of a special Yahoo polls feature which lists each member's email address after their "vote". Normally we disable this feature so everyone's vote is anonymous, but in this case this allows anyone to check the poll to see everyone from a particular state and then send emails to them to make special "meet" arrangements or to coordinate other special local TheMouseForLess activities.

So, DON'T BE LEFT OUT! Make your vote and tell us where you are from, in one of the three Polls at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheMouseForLess/polls. In this case you only vote in the poll which contains your state or location. I had to split it up into three polls because Yahoo limits the maximum number of choices per poll to 25.

Now I mentioned earlier that we've had other great ideas in the past. These Polls are NOT to replace those other ideas! but to AUGMENT them. Just to recap, here are those other ideas again:

- Add your City and State location to your email "signature" so that it appears with every post you make to the group!
- Update your Yahoo "profile" to include your City and State so that it displays in the TheMouseForLess Member listings!
- Don't be a "lurker" and post so that we can get to know you better and learn those secret "tips" that only YOU know!

Just one point of etiquette, once location has been established between members through posting, if members want to continue a local "dialog", you might want to consider taking the dialog off-line and emailing directly between members instead of posting to the group. Although many of us on the group, including myself, are admittedly nosey :-) and love hearing all about everyone else. Besides that IS how community is built!

BTW, For the first several months that these polls ran, Pennsylvania(my state) was the leader in DD membership. It has now fallen to second place behind Florida :-( I noticed several new members from PA who recently posted. If those PA members have not voted in these Polls yet, maybe we can recapture the #1 spot in the group. We also only have 14 non-US members listed in the Poll so far. I saw a recent new member posting from Scotland which could build our international membership count up.