ListProc: Owner Information
Manage an email discussion list
Before you start
This document provides detailed information about owning and managing email discussion lists at KU and assumes you have a basic understanding of the nature of email discussion lists. Please make certain you are familiar with the general information contained in Email discussion lists at KU before proceeding.
The examples in this guide refer specifically to email discussion lists housed at The University of Kansas and therefore may not apply to other lists housed on other servers.
Why establish a list?
Hundreds of discussion lists are already established at KU. Most lists are used for facilitating communication among faculty who share common interests, members of departments, members of various campus committees, and even students enrolled in the same course. (Participation in lists housed at KU is not limited to persons affiliate with KU.) Another purpose for establishing a list is for information dissemination, such as periodic announcements and online newsletters. Such lists are called "one-way" lists. Subscribers receive posts from the owner but cannot send messages back to all of the list subscribers.
Who may own a list?
To own a list, you must be a KU faculty or staff member. In addition, official student organizations may own lists (individual students may not). Student organizations must have a email service that is owned by the organization and must use that address to manage their lists. List ownership under a student email address is not allowed.
Basic list owner requirements
In order to effectively manage your list, you need email service and reliable (daily) access to that service. Online sign-up for email service on the KU Exchange system is available at http://www.technology.ku.edu/accounts/.
List ownership demands that you be very familiar with your email program. Prior experience as a subscriber to a list would also be extremely beneficial. For information about locating a list of interest, see Participate in an email discussion list.
Deskside Coaching is available to help owners learn common list management techniques and avoid pitfalls. Contact Instructional Services at training@ku.edu or 864-0410 to make an appointment.
List owner responsibilities
The list owner is responsible for the smooth functioning of the list. Depending on the nature of the list, this can require as little five minutes oncer per week or several hours per day. In any case a list owner must become familiar with ListProc, the list processing software in use at KU. (See the training opportunities for list owners described in Basic list owner requirements above).
Specific list owner duties can range from adding and deleting subscribers to monitoring every message before it is distributed to the list. In addition to knowledge of list owner commands, list owners must also have a thorough understanding of the user commands in order to respond to problems and queries by subscribers and potential subscribers.
In addition, the owner must resolve error messages generated by ListProc. A separate document, Understanding list errors for list owners is available to help owners resolve errors.
How to establish a list
The basic setup
Establishing a list involves these steps:
- Read
Responsibilities of email discussion list owners at The University of Kansas. - Decide on a name for your list.
- There is no limit to the number of characters in the list name.
- The list name may not contain a period (.) or an underscore (_).
- Avoid L (letter L) in instances where it could be mistaken for 1 (number one);
- The list name can have no spaces.
- Send email to listadm@ku.edu
with the following information:
- Desired name for the list (please also suggest an alternate in case your first choice is taken);
- Description of the purpose of the list;
- Information about the expected life span of the list (e.g., one semester, until March, or indefinite);
- Information about the owner(s) of the list. (A list may have up to 3 owners.):
- name(s), campus address(es), campus phone number(s)
- email address(es)
- descriptions of your list owners' experience in participating in lists.
The address for posting messages to your list is listname@ku.edu, where listname is the name you requested. The list name is not case sensitive. Remember that messages go to this address and ListProc commands go to listproc@ku.edu.
Once the list is set up
Subscribe yourself to the list
List owners are not automatically subscribed to the lists they own. If you
want to participate in the list, send the following to listproc@ku.edu:
sub listname yourname
Replace listname with the name of your list and yourname
with your name
Create a welcome message
Subscribers automatically receive a global, generic welcome message from ListProc telling them they have successfully subscribed and how to unsubscribe, if desired. You will receive that welcome after subscribing. The owner must create list-specific information which is appended to the global welcome message. In order to be sure that your welcome message does not repeat the information presented in the global welcome, please review the global welcome message. To assist you in determing what sort of information you might want to inlcude in your list-specific welcome, please see these examples of list welome messages.
To create your welcome message, send the following to listproc@ku.edu:
put listname listpassword welcome
text of welcome message
The text of the welcome message must begin on a new line, following the put
command line and can be as long as you want. If it is more convenient, you can
create the text in a word processor and then cut and paste it into your email
message when it's ready. Your text will be appended to the system's welcome
message and sent to all new subscribers.
Adjust list configuration settings
The following are some of the most common list configuration considerations. Details on how to send list configuration commands to ListProc are available on the Common commands for list owners page. Additional relevant information is available on the Email discussion lists at KU page under Types of lists.To moderate or not?
A moderated list is one in which all messages posted to the list are sent first to the owner for review before distribution to subscribers. Depending on the message volume, this can represent quite a burden for the list owner(s). This decision depends in large part on the nature of your list. If the topic of the list is one which is likely to generate a lot of emotional debate or involves topics that require a certain degree of privacy, you may want to moderate the list. Otherwise, the list is likely to function fine without moderation.
Open subscriptions?
If your list is intended for a specific, limited group of people, such as the members of a committee or students in a class, you may not want to allow open subscriptions to the list. If this is the case, your list can be configured so that all requests to join the list are sent to the owner for approval. On the other hand, perhaps your list is intended for anyone interested in the topic. In that case, you will likely want to allow open subscriptions.
Help for list owners
A list for list owners
All list owners at KU are automatically subscribed to OWNERS-L, the KU list owners’ list. OWNERS-L provides a forum in which to discuss list management problems and concerns. Traffic on the list is light. If you do not want to participate, you can unsubscribe at any time.
Official documentation
An owner’s manual for ListProc is available at: http://listproc.sourceforge.net/manuals.html.*
If you choose to download the document as a rich text format file, you can then open
it using a standard word processing program such as Microsoft
Word.
*This manual is for version 7.2. There is no manual for version 8.2.10, which
is the version currently in use at KU. However, the changes to ListProc since
version 7.2 are documented in this List-Owner Manual Addendum prepared by IT.
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