Invitation: T'ai Chi Ch'uan Forum

Invitation to Join the Tai_Chi_Chuan_Forum

This web page is provided to invite you to join an email list (listserv), which has been developed to help practitioners of the Professor Cheng Man-chíng Yang T'ai Chi Ch'uan Short Form to communicate information to each other. Please read this entire page, we hope you join and take part in this opportunity.

Table of Contents (Please read this entire page)

Cofounders

Introduction

History of the List

List Specifics

Rules for Posting

Features of the List

Subscribing Yourself

Co-founders:

This email list has been developed by:

Thomas M. Krapu, Ph.D. (Tom)
Personal/Corporate Coach
Licensed Psychologist
314-422-7250 (o)

http://www.krapu4.com
http://www.krapu4.com/psy/
http://www.krapu4.com/taichi/

AND

Malcolm Tobias

Introduction

Malcolm Tobias and I (Tom Krapu) met through a local T'ai Chi Ch'uan group and quickly discovered that in addition to our mutual interest in t'ai chi, we both have some background with computers. When Malcolm made me aware of an email LISTSERV software that was available, we both got excited about starting an email group that was unique in the sense that it could be available to our specific t'ai chi "family" AND it might be different from what we had experienced with other Internet offerings in this area. Malcolm had access to an Internet server at Washington University here in Saint Louis and we were in business.

History of the List

We started tai-chi-talk on 7/23/97. T'ai-chi-talk grew purely from word-of-mouth since we do not have our list on any search engines and it is a private and closed list. The list began growing and levels of membership are outlined below. Our membership has included practitioners from at least four continents and numerous countries, as well as all across the USA. There are several members who have studied directly with Professor Cheng (and whose support we cannot be appreciated enough). In July of 1999 we changed T'ai-chi-talk to a moderated format and changed the name to tai_chi_chuan_forum.

To give you a estimation of membership the following timeline of membership is provided (1):

July 1997 tai-chi-talk begins

March 1998 50 members

May 1998 100 members

July 1998 150 members

July 1999 200 members had subscribed (1).

(1) did not include about 20% of people who eventually unsubscribed because list was unmoderated.

Note: After becoming a moderated list, unsubscribing dropped to nearly zero and most members who had unsubscribed accepted an invitation to rejoin and have remained members since. The people who do unsubscribe usually give a reason like they don't have time for it or something like that.

July 1999 tai_chi_chuan_forum begins, Dr. Tom Krapu is Moderator about 160 members

Dec 2000 Membership equals 230

January 2002 Membership equals 258

January 2003 Membership equals 270

January 2004 Membership equals 282

January 2005 Membership equals 310

December 2005 - Intro page for the list has 2,278 hits. Membership equals 309

December 2005 - Forum moves to taichispot.com/phpbb/, Dr. Don Schurman takes over as moderator.
Waldo Kuipers becomes Technical Administrator, Advisory Panel established including
Dr. Don Davis. Membership equals 315

August 2006 -
Forum moves back to Mailman email software. Membership equals 359

August 2007 Membership equals 314

April 2008 Membership equals 310

June 2008
Dr. Don Schurman concludes his tenure as moderator of the Forum. Move to Yahoo Group..

August 2008 Yahoo Discussion Group begins.
Membership equals 313

July 2011
Danny Emerick
starts moderating the group

November 2014 Mike David
starts moderating the group
Membership equals 147

List Specifics

This list is maintained by the developers and is not associated with any particular group of Cheng Man-chíng practitioners.

Any non-subscriber who posts a message will get an error message stating that they need to register and be a Yang short form practitioner. These requests should be directed to this webpage (http://www.krapu4.com/taichi/taitlkin.htm) where they can provide information about themselves, what school they learned the form from, and who their Yang Short Form teacher is and their lineage to Professor Cheng. This will substantiate that they are within our "school" and is based primarly on the honor system. Then they will be added to the subscriber list.

The list will be guarded to avoid SPAMS from any source.

Any subscriber (and ONLY subscribers) can distribute information to the list. It is imperative that subscribers keep this in mind when submitting materials.

The main reason that Tom wanted to create this list is because he encounters information that he believes would be valuable to share with individuals who practice our form (e.g. web addresses related to T'ai chi, information from web pages, workshop announcements, etc.).

This email list simplifies this process and allows others to easily share similar information with the group.

This email list is also developing into a place to discuss aspects of our practice and to help each participant to fulfill as much of the potential of t'ai chi ch'uan as possible in our lives. The archives are a permanent record of this discussion.

Let's try to find what is going to be most useful to each other. We would hate for this list to "degrade" into controversy. Let's maintain the spirit of T'ai Chi as taught by Professor Cheng.

The email distributed will have the person's email that submits so you can respond to them directly ("back channel") if you don't want to "broadcast" your response to everyone on the list. But if you want to post a response to the list you will have to cut and paste the list's email address into your email. The archive of previous postings will be made available to you as a member after you are subscribed.

Now for the legal stuff. Mr. Malcolm Tobias and Dr. Tom Krapu reserve the right to determine membership of the T'ai Chi Ch'uan Forum. The statements made by list members do not necessarily reflect the thoughts of either of the list co-founders, or the list moderator. Every attempt will be made to moderate the list in a manner which respects the beliefs of others and honors Professor Cheng and the other list members.

Rules for Posting

To review the more detailed rules for posting that you are agreeing to by joining, see:

http://www.krapu4.com/taichi/talkguid.htm

Features of the List

The postings from the list can be viewed in a daily digest form if preferred. Members can turn receipt off when on vacation, keep membership private, and view other members email addresses who are not keeping membership private. There are also archives of past postings available to members to view.

Subscribing Yourself

Subscribing yourself requires the following information:

Full name.
Phone Number.
City, State, Postalcode, and Country of residence.
email address
Your teacher's name and their lineage to Professor Cheng
(all of this information can be kept private as a member of the list)

To be subscribed we would PREFER that you go to the following link to fill out a form to automatically submit this information (your browser must support forms)
OR
just reply to the email address below and provide the following information:

PERFERRED - Link to electronic form:

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CMC_Discussions/info

Copy and paste the following into an email to:

taichiclub@charter.net

Would you like to have your name and email address available to other list members?
Currently, we try to avoid publicizing the membership list to avoid SPAM. Many members have expressed interest in knowing who else is subscribed.
Your address (city, state, postal code, country and telephone number.

Please provide a brief description of the lineage of your teacher, and where appropriate, your teacher's teacher. If possible, try to describe the lineage to Professor Cheng. Ask your teacher if you do know this information.
Do you mind if any or all of the above info be included for other members to see?
Please be specific about what info you do or do not want included.
After your information has been reviewed you will get a confirmation message that you have been subscribed OR an email regarding your status as a member.

You will get a confirmation message from Yahoo when you are registered. Feel free to distribute this web address:

http://www.krapu4.com/taichi/taitlkin.htm

to others who qualify for membership.

If your browser does NOT support forms, then cut and paste the questions (above) into your email composer to submit this information via email to be considered for membership:

Again, the email address to submit information if you do not use the electronic form: taichiclub@charter.net

Sincerely,

Dr. Tom Krapu
List co-founder

last revision: 11/10/2014