- What is a mailing list?
- A mailing list is a list of email addresses. If you
send email to a mailing list the message is forwarded to all the email
addresses on the mailing list.
- Why use mailing
lists? Why not just keep them in my address book?
- The advantage of using a list server is that people
can add themselves to the mailing lists without it taking up your time. The
list server also handles most bounced emails automatically, so you don't get
a large amount of bounced mail. (The last time I got behind a bit behind on one of my servers, 11,000 bounce
messages accumulated. That's when I automated it.)
- A user is complaining about receiving messages, but they're not on the list.
- See the page Non-subscribers
- What options are there
for mailing lists?
- The most important distinction is
moderated/unmoderated. Moderated lists only allow one person to post. (e.g.
announcements) Unmoderated lists allow any subscriber to post. An example of
a moderated list might be a meeting announcement list. An example of an unmoderated list might be
a java discussion list.
Other options include archiving messages, and private
lists. Log in to any mailing list, and click on 'help' in the menu at the top of the page
for more info.
-
- What about 'vacation' programs?
- Vacation programs are programs that reply to
messages for someone while they are on vacation - Usually saying something
list "I'm out of the office, I'll get back to you later."
Many of these programs are badly behaved, and as a
general rule, you should not use them. In particular, if you are a member of
a mailing list (or worse, if you run a mailing list) you should not run
these programs. Do you really want to send a message saying "I'm on
vacation" to 10,000 strangers? That can happen if your vacation program
does not follow all the rules. (This is even more embarassing if you are
running the list, and should know better).
- What does Ichabod do about vacation programs?
- Ichabod looks for various markers to indicate that a
message is automatically generated. In particular, if a message subject
contains 'Out of the Office', or 'Out of office', it will get thrown away if sent to a mailing list.
Ichabod also looks for various special header fields
that indicate a vacation program.
- Can I set up my email account on Ichabod to
send 'vacation' notices.
- No!
- How do I send a message to a list?
- If you are the moderator, or the list is not
moderated, send your mail to (listname)@(hostname), e.g.
somelist@somelistsite.com
- How do I change settings
of the list?
- First you have to log in. Once you have logged in, there is on line help available.
Click on 'HELP' at the top of the page, or click on the ? marks that are
throughout the page.
- How many people are on my list? On all the lists?
- For any list, the count is on that list's page. For
example: http://www.listsite.com/testers
The total for all lists is displayed at the top of the main page. For example http://www.listsite.com
Note that the total includes non-public lists, so you may see something like 'No Public Lists, 400 subscribers.'
- How do I 'log in'?
-
- Go to the website for your server (for example
http://www.listsite.com)
- Click on 'LOG IN' in the menu at the top of the
page.
- Enter the name of your mailing list (e.g. javasig) into the text
box, and press enter.
- You will be prompted for again for the list name and for a
password.
The password should have been
given you when the list was created. If you don't have it, contact your
server's administrator.
- You should now see the information page for your list.
- How do I get a copy of the mailing list's subscribers?
- There are three ways to get the subscribers from a list
- From the web
-
- Go to the website for your server (e.g.
http://www.listsite.com)
- click on the name of your list (e.g.
javasig)
- Click on 'LOG IN' in the menu at the top of
the page.
- You will be prompted for a username and
password, the username is the list name (e.g. javasig), and the
password should have been given you when the list was created. If
you don't have it, contact your server's administrator.
- The list of subscribers is on the bottom of
the page.
- Via email
-
send email to XXXXX-request, where XXXXX is the
name of the list e.g. javasig-request.
The email
should have two lines
pass PPPPP
list
Where PPPPP is your password. A copy of
the subscriber list will be returned to you. This message has to be
plain text, if it is only HTML, or RTF, it won't work. If it is multipart MIME, with a text part,
it should work.
If you need the
password, contact your server's administrator.
Note: The latest version should parse
- Automatically
- You can set an mailing list to automatically
send the addresses on the list to you at a regular interval. This is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
send email to XXXXX-request, where XXXXX is the
name of the list e.g. javasig-request.
The email
should have two lines
pass PPPPP
owner YourEmailAddress@YourHost.com
interval weekly
Where PPPPP is your password. A copy of
the subscriber list will be returned to you. This message has to be
plain text, if it is HTML, or RTF, it won't work. If it is multipart MIME, with a text part,
it should work. If you need the
password, contact your site administrator.
- Do invalid addresses get automatically removed from the lists?
-
If the administrator turns on the 'Auto-unsubscribe' option. (This is found on the host administration
page, found at /admin/hosts/#settings on your server.) This is a per server setting, not
a per list setting.
Ichabod can parse bounce messages from about thirty five different mail servers (including any that support
Internet Standard Delivery Status Notifications). Any time a we receive a message we recognize, that
says the address is invalid, we remove the user.
- Does auto-unsusbcribe always work?
- No. If we can't understand the message, we can't remove the user. Nor can we if we can parse
the message, but don't recognize the email address (see the page Non-subscribers for a discussion of this).
In this case, these message will be delivered to the postmaster of the site.
Also, some servers will send back a message that claims that the user does not exist, when
they really mean 'the user is temporarily out of disk space', or something similar. In this
case the user will be removed from the list.
- Is there a way to control how many errors it takes before a user is removed?
- No. This is on our todo list.