E-mail Lists

What is an Electronic Mail List? [General]

A mail list is something you subscribe to by sending a specially constructed e-mail request to the list's server (the listserv). Unlike magazine subscriptions, these subscriptions are free (unless you are told otherwise when you try to join the list). After you subscribe (or are subscribed) to a mail list you usually get an e-mail notice with some information about it.

The different types of mail lists [General]

There are two general types of mail lists:

information services
discussion groups (moderated or unmoderated)

The first of these is one-way communication to subscribers, such as a weekly newletter sent to everyone on the list. The second of these offer two-way communication, in that an e-mail sent to the mail list from any subscriber gets sent to all subscribers. If the list is set up as a moderated list then a list owner pre-screens such e-mail prior to allowing them to be broadcast to everyone. Many lists at Graceland (such as those set up for classes) are two-way unmoderated lists and the members are expected to be respectful about using it in the manner intended.

MAILMAN versus MAJORDOMO

Graceland's mail lists are managed by a system called MAILMAN. Some years ago, Graceland mail lists were managed by MAJORDOMO. MAJORDOMO was the most common system in use (and may still be), but MAILMAN gained popularity because it used a web page interface for people to make changes or get information about the list. MAJORDOMO lists did the same thing with a more cumbersome approach that involved sending e-mail to the MAJORDOMO "robot" that contained commands for it to carry out and it would report back by e-mail. Other than that, there is no difference in how members send/receive information to/from the mail list.

How does one create a mail list at Graceland?

Requests for creating a mail list are handled by the Information Systems staff, in particular John Adamski at x5267 (adamski@graceland.edu). The convention for mail list names at Graceland is to end the name with "-L" (L for List) and lists set up for courses use the course ID, e.g., cpsc1100-L. For consistency, stick with this convention. You may not have a choice. When giving instructions, I capitalize the L at the end, as in cpsc1100-L, to avoid confusion with the decimal digit "1". But since the name is case insensitive it makes no difference between using cpsc1100-l, CPSC1100-L, or CpSc1100-L.

What are the subscriber's responsibilities? [General]

Always provide a short descriptive title for SUBJECT when posting (sending) email to the list. Blank subjects are bad.
Save your subscription confirmation message which contains important information about the list.
Keep track of what lists you belong to. Some are not very active so you can forget.
Check and delete mail received from a mail list so that it does not pile up and fill up your account.
Be respectful of everyone on the list since what you post is sent to all of them.
If someone posts a question to the list and you can answer it, as a courtesy you should REPLY-ALL so that everyone sees the answer, not just the questioner.

MAILMAN lists at Graceland

Not much information will be given here about how to manage and interact with the MAILMAN server. It is supposed to be somewhat intuitive. To see all of the MAILMAN mail lists that have been set up at Graceland, go to http://mailman.graceland.edu/mailman/listinfo. From there you can click your way to the list of interest, or if you are a list owner, you can click on the link for administrators and go from there.

You may be able to direct questions to those who are familiar with mail lists (Bob Farnham at x5291, Jim Jones at x5294) or the Information Systems MAILMAN administrator (John Adamski at x5267). Remember, there is always Google-- just type your question into the search field and see where it leads.

MAJORDOMO lists (no longer relevant to Graceland lists)

One interacts directly with Majordomo by sending e-mail to majordomo@DOMAIN (where DOMAIN was graceland.edu when we had Majordomo lists). The e-mail should have no SUBJECT and the content body of the e-mail consists of one or more Majordomo commands, with the END command as the last one. The END command is optional, but a good idea if your e-mailer is set up to automatically add a favorite quotation or signoff signature. The following body of an e-mail would cause Majordomo to reply with a complete list of possible Majordomo commands that it understands:

   help
   end

[Back for more helps]