Vital Communities To Shut Down Its Listservs Friday

Update: In an announcement Thursday afternoon, Vital Communities said it will pause its planned shutdown, though it hasn’t yet released a new timeline. More tomorrow. Original story follows.

The Upper Valley’s days as an online-community island are over. After 23 years of using locally run town listservs to sell snow tires, put out pleas for hay, learn about concerts and yoga classes, and debate everything from selectboard decisions to noise from a local shooting range, Upper Valley townspeople will have to find an alternative: Vital Communities, which has run most of the town lists in the region for two decades, announced yesterday that it is shuttering them Friday, Aug. 21, at 8 pm. It will continue to run the Upper Valley-wide listservs (events, goods, and services) and special-topic lists.

In place of the town listservs that have connected people with their closest neighbors for nearly a quarter century, Vital Communities is recommending that users sign up with Burlington-based Front Porch Forum, which is expanding beyond its Vermont focus to include New Hampshire towns in Vital Communities’ service area; subscribers to the Vital Communities lists will not automatically be transferred. Town lists like Hartland’s, hosted independently, will be unaffected—though FPF has forums available for those towns, as well. California-based NextDoor has been trying to make inroads in the region, and several of the volunteers who run and moderate the Vital Communities lists are discussing launching an independent email-based set of listservs.

Stepping back from hosting the lists "has been a point of discussion for a while,” says Vital Communities executive director Ellen Hender. “Over the last few months we did a deep dive and explored options and reflected and recognized that the lists have outgrown what Vital Communities is able to support—and have outgrown the expertise we can offer.” In particular, she says, both the technology involved in operating a set of community forums and the far more hair-trigger atmosphere that permeates community discussion have outpaced what Vital Communities originally envisioned when it took over the listservs hosted by ValleyNet. The first of those town listservs began with just a relative handful of users in Thetford on Jan. 1, 2003; Lyme’s list, hosted by Dartmouth, preceded it by a year.

Earlier this summer, Vital Communities shut down the Woodstock list after a couple members of the list began peppering it with allegations against town manager Eric Duffy and other town officials; many list members found the online environment so toxic that they asked Vital Communities to take action—and, in some cases, moved over to Front Porch Forum. Hender says that while “there were challenges in Woodstock,” there also have been challenges with other communities and with the listserv platform itself. “I recognize people will link those things [ie, Woodstock and the broader town-list shutdown] together,” she says, “but it was a bigger-picture conversation and looking at the lists in totality.”

In that context, Front Porch Forum’s policy of using a team of moderators to gauge each post before it’s posted—the volunteer moderators for the Vital Communities listservs only stepped in after posts appeared—might prove appealing. “What we’ve seen over the last decade or so is that keeping local online spaces civil and welcoming has gotten more difficult; the moderation has gotten a lot harder. We tackle that moderation work with a professional staff—close to half of our staff are the moderation support team, and even with that it’s hard work,” says Jason Van Driesche, FPF’s chief of staff. Adds FPF co-founder Michael Wood-Lewis, “We’re just amazed at the work that Vital Communities and their cadre of volunteer moderators have done for so many years. We have nothing but respect for the folks that have done that.”

Moderation isn’t the only feature in which Front Porch Forum differs from the listservs. It began in 2000 in one neighborhood in Burlington, where Wood-Lewis and his wife, Valerie, had moved from Washington, DC. They’d struggled to find friends, and as Cathy Resmer wrote in Seven Days back in 2006, “They tried to attend neighborhood gatherings, but always seemed to hear about them too late. ‘After one event,’ Wood-Lewis recalls, a neighbor told me, “You’ll find out about these things after you’ve lived here 10 years and you’re on the grapevine.” That lit a fire under me.’” Over the years, what began as a newsletter for a residents of a single neighborhood expanded to other neighborhoods, then to Chittenden County, then to pretty much all of Vermont. It supports itself in large part through ads.

FPF now has 30 employees and a presence in every town and city in Vermont, as well as small parts of NY and MA. The new town forums on the NH side of the Upper Valley are based on Vital Communities’ service area map, which you’ll find here; the Vermont forums already existed. Signing up involves going to https://frontporchforum.com/ and entering your name, email address, and home address. FPF has set a threshold of 100 members before a town’s forum becomes active.

The address info allows FPF to determine which forum a new member will belong to, to promote a town-by-town sense of community, and to be able to ride herd on potential scammers. “We gather this information because it is a critical part of our model of helping people connect,” says Wood-Lewis. “It’s like an online block party and they’re wearing a name tag. We want people to know who’s talking and that those people have some claim to the community.” Moreover, says Van Driesche, “We’ve found that people are much more likely to be comfortable responding to a post from a neighbor, reaching out to help with something, participating in a community project, engaging in a discussion if they have confidence that the people on their forum are actually their neighbors. We collect that information in service of helping people have that confidence and that trust.”

At the same time, while FPF doesn’t allow signing up for multiple towns, as the listservs did, its “Nearby” function lets users in one town see activity in neighboring towns and a digest of activity in a more far-flung ring of towns. When a user posts to a town forum, the system shows other members in that town their full name and the name of their road or street; a reader from a few towns over will only see a first name. “We put the greatest value on posting from neighbors,” says Wood-Lewis. “We also appreciate posts from small businesses, area nonprofits, and local government, but it’s the neighbor-to-neighbor content that has proven most valuable and useful to people and to our mission of connecting communities, so we have some boundaries that lead to more people feeling comfortable speaking up. People are more comfortable speaking in a small gathering than in a crowd of a thousand.”

Many of the older Vermont town forums have business listings and community calendars, while municipalities, emergency managers, and other local government offices regularly use their local forums to get information out, just as some Upper Valley town officials have done with the listservs. At least one Upper Valley town, Hartford, has already begun the transition over to FPF.

Still, it’s clear that the abrupt end to the town listservs is already roiling things. The moderators of the listservs have been meeting to discuss the issue and the possibility of launching their own version of the lists. “Vital Communities never reached out to the group of 38 list serve moderators who have collectively donated tens of thousands of volunteer time to these lists over the years,” says one. “Then they gave us three days’ notice along with the subscribers. We are asking for a longer transition.” It’s possible, says another, that there may be “documents that explicitly provided that the list would be handed back [to the group of moderators] when Vital Communities decided to no longer support them,” though that’s unsettled.

On the other hand, longtime moderator and ValleyNet loyalist F. X. Flinn, who is the owner of the Hartford list, wrote there Tuesday, "FPF is moderated, it supports itself with ads, it is not quite as immediate as the List Serv, but friends of mine around the state use it all the time and appreciate it the same way I appreciate the Hartford List Serv, so I have no hesitation recommending it. I’ve had many conversations with the owners and I know for a fact that this is not some big money-making scheme, but a genuine effort to bring to the rest of Vermont what we here in the Upper Valley have been lucky to have because of ValleyNet and Vital Communities.”

“We recognize that there will be people unhappy with this decision,” says Vital Communities’ Hender. And though it won’t be possible to register that unhappiness on the listserv after 8 pm Friday, “we’re ready to take emails and phone calls directly.” FPF maintains an online help forum and its staff tries to respond to help requests within an hour or two.

Note: An earlier version of this story said that the Lyme listserv, which for 24 years had been hosted by Dartmouth, would not be affected. That information was incorrect: In March this year, Dartmouth forced all lists not directly related to the college off its listserv services. Lyme’s listserv moderators migrated it over to the Vital Communities lists as of April 1. It’s included in Vital Communities’ shutdown plans.

Here’s the notice that Vital Communities posted to the town listservs Wednesday afternoon:

We are writing to let you know that Vital Communities will be sunsetting all of the town-based community listservs, including this one, later this week. No further posts will be accepted to the Hartford Listserv after 8pm on Friday, 8/21. Vital Communities will continue to operate the Upper Valley-wide and topic-specific lists.  

There is an opportunity to continue town-based community connection online, without gaps, through Vermont-based Front Porch Forum. We will share more information on that option below, including how to join your local forum.  

The listservs were created several decades ago to build connections and share opportunities, questions, and resources at the community level. The objectives for the lists have not changed over the years, but the environment in which the listservs operate has evolved significantly.  

Over the last few months, Vital Communities has reflected on whether there are adaptations we could make to the listservs to meet the current environment with our available resources. Ultimately, we have realized that the town-based listservs have outgrown the level of support and expertise that Vital Communities can provide. It is time for Vital Communities to step back and recognize that there are now other entities with the right expertise, experience, and resources that provide these services in the Upper Valley, and that will give the listservs space to continue growing, thriving, and evolving. 

Critically, Front Porch Forum, a Vermont-based public benefit company with a mission to help neighbors connect and build community, already offers their forums (listservs to us) across the entire Upper Valley region - now including all New Hampshire Upper Valley towns. Front Porch Forum is ready to pick up the thread of connection and conversation from the listservs, and to welcome subscribers and communities at https://frontporchforum.com. They also offer town-by-town community calendars and business directories that are networked together to give both a local and a regional view.  

If you are not already familiar with Front Porch Forum, you can learn more about it and sign up for a free account at frontporchforum.com We are excited about the continuity that Front Porch Forum offers and encourage listserv subscribers to explore their town-based forums. 

One important note: Vital Communities is not going to move our town-based subscriber lists to Front Porch Forum automatically. Each subscriber will need to sign themselves up for a Front Porch Forum account at frontporchforum.com. There is an online help center at help.frontporchforum.com with support from real people if you have questions or challenges signing up. Vital Communities is also here to provide support with the changes ahead. 

We offer huge thanks to the current and past list managers for their many years of volunteer service connecting and supporting your community through celebrations, challenges, and transitions. This listserv would not have been possible without their collective support.  

Ellen Hender, Stacy Brown & the Vital Communities team, White River Junction 

And Front Porch Forum sent out the following to its Upper Valley members on Thursday morning:

Front Porch Forum is pleased to announce that anyone in the Upper Valley of Vermont AND New Hampshire can now join FPF!

As you may know, about 70 Upper Valley towns have long been served by vibrant local listservs. The host of these listservs, Vital Communities, has decided to sunset the lists as of August 21. They've asked FPF to step in and offer our community-building platform across the region.

This is where we need your help. If everyone who was a member of an Upper Valley community listserv joins their local Forum, you and your town will continue to benefit from a vibrant and useful online community. Please encourage your neighbors to join FPF today! Send them to https://frontporchforum.com to sign up for free.

Thanks,

Michael Wood-Lewis, co-founder
Front Porch Forum