Talkitover: Create your own group

With Talkitover you can create your very own discussion groups on the Web. Choose any topic you like, tell your friends and colleagues, and you're in business. And best of all, Talkitover is completely free!

To bookmark this page use: http://talkitover.com/create.html

Start your group in fifteen seconds!

Group title:
Your e-mail address:

That's all you need to

More options

For more possibilities fill in any or all of the entries below. The links point to explanations in "Options Explained" below.

Group description
(recommended):
Your name:
Recipients of
creation notice:
(E-mail addresses,
separated by commas,
returns or spaces)
Subscribe all original recipients:
Remove group description from creation notice:
List group publicly:
Choose a category:

Arts Business Countries Education Entertainment
Hardware Health News Politics Religion
Science Software Society Travel None

Choose a subcategory:
Protect group with this password:
Use this user name in connection with the password:
Remove the password from the group creation notice:
Disallow email subscriptions:
Make this a test group only:

Options explained

Group title

Choose a short, informative name for your group, describing the area in which you intend to have your discussions or collaborations. (Example: Global warming and other weather changes.)

In addition you can select one of Talkitover's categories and specify a subcategory.

Your email address

As soon as Talkitover creates your group it will email you, using the address you have given, a message giving all the information necessary to use your group, in particular its Web address (URL).

Group description

You can leave this blank if you like, but it is generally better to give group participants an indication of what you intend to discuss, and some idea of your own background. This will remain accessible in the group's Web page.

Including your name

It is recommended that you write your full name, which will be included in the creation notice on the group's page.

Recipients of creation notice

Talkitover will email you the group creation notice. You can direct Talkitover to mail the same notice to other people as well, so that they will know about the group's creation.

Just specify the addresses on one or more lines. Between two addresses on the same line you can use spaces or commas; or just write one address per line.

This option only emails the creation notice. It does not subscribe anyone to the group; see the next option about email subscriptions.

Subscribing all original recipients

If you are certain that the initial recipients of the group creation notice (including yourself) will be subscribing to receive its messages by e-mail, you can take care of it yourself, avoiding individual subscriptions. This is useful for example if you are converting to Talkitover an existing mailing list and know that all current subscribers will want to continue receiving the messages.

This option will have no effect if you disable email subscriptions.

As a consideration for others, do not subscribe them unless you are certain that they want to receive the group's messages by email. In case of doubt, let them subscribe to the group by themselves; this is easy to do from the group's home page.

Listing the group publicly

We respect your privacy: by default the creation of your group will not be made public. No one will find out about it except if told by someone else, or if there is a link to your group's pages from a publicly accessible page. (To safeguard against the last case you may protect the group pages with a password.)

If instead you do want your group to have the broadest possible appeal, like a Usenet newsgroup, you can select to make it a public group. In that case it will appear in two lists, both accessible from the Talkitover Public Group page:

The list of the most recently created groups.

The full alphabetical list of all Talkitover groups.

If your group is public you should probably select a main category and a subcategory (see next).

Choosing a category

You may select a category and a subcategory, which will be included in the title of your group. For example if your group has the title

Roman Polanski movies

you may want to select the category arts from the menu, and the subcategory Cinema-Polanski. As a result, the full title of your group will be:

Arts-Cinema-Polanski: Roman Polanski movies

Choosing a category and a subcategory is recommended for public groups: it will make it easier for people to find your group.

Choosing a subcategory

If specifying a subcategory, use two or more words separated by hyphens, most general first, most specific last, as with Cinema-Polanski.

Protecting the group through a password

You can restrict access to your group's pages to the people who know a password of your choosing (no spaces or tabs). Anyone who tries to access the page will be prompted for a user name and password.

If you specify a password, you should not make the group public: you can announce your group to the world, or reserve it for yourself and the people you approve -- but not both! A request to include it in the list of public groups (see above) will be ignored.

Choosing a user name

By default the user name for a password-protected group is Talkitover. You can specify a different one. (No spaces or tabs.)

Removing the password from the group creation notice

The group creation notice, emailed to you and to anyone specified as "recipients" above, will normally list the password, so that you and your colleagues can immediately start using the page without further ado. No further message from Talkitover will ever include the password; you are responsible for giving it to anyone who later joins the group.

For further protection you can remove the password from the creation notice; the message will simply indicate that you have password-protected the group and withheld the password.

To find out about the password and access the group, people will have to contact you separately.

Disallowing email subscriptions

Normally readers of your group can subscribe to the group from its Web page; this allows them to receive all group messages directly by email. You can disallow this possibility if you wish.

Including the message in the email notice

Normally, the text of the group creation notice is not included in the notice which will be emailed to you to any other recipients that you have specified. This avoids loading your mailbox with information that is already present in the group's Web page; the email message contains the URL of that page.

You can, however, change this policy by checking the corresponding box.

You can also include extra text that will be mailed to the recipients of the e-mail creation notice, but not stored in the Web page. This is useful if you want to give the original recipients some information that may not be relevant any more for later members of the discussion (for example if you are transforming a mailing list to a Talkitover group).

Creating a test group

You can create a test group, which will have all the properties of normal groups but is not intended to be kept. A test group may include any other options that you wish to try, although making it public will have no effect. The most recent test groups are announced in a special category, Test, in the list of public groups.