Managing a Mailing List or Discussion-Group
It is the responsibility of the owner to maintain the list - depending
on the type of group or list - this means adding/deleting members if
subscribing is not permitted, or reviewing/editing messages if moderating
is required. In all cases, the owners send the original ascii text files
to the members of the group or list.
The ListOwner's Responsibilities
(as extracted from the
IEEE Electronic Mail Policy):
3.4.2 Every e-mail list must have an owner.
The list owner responsibilities include:
- Establishment and communication of distribution rules
- Establishment, communication and enforcement of
acceptable use practices (practices
may be specific to the list, but must be in compliance with the
IEEE Acceptable Use Practices)
- Determining the nature of the list (e.g., moderated, unmoderated, etc.)
- Maintenance of list (including anticipated life cycle and related data)
- Establishment of a list archival policy/practice
3.4.3 Every e-mail list must include an introductory file
that is delivered to each new list
member at the time of subscription or entry into the list.
The file must contain:
- Statement of purpose with full list description
- Subscribe/unsubscribe processes
- Name of responsible entity or functional organization
- IEEE Acceptable Use Practices
- Acceptable use practices (if unique to the list)
- Contact information regarding list issues (there may be one
contact for technical issues and one for editorial issues)
Discussion Groups (those where replies are set to automatically go back to the
whole group) MUST
be watched extrememely carefully!
There are times when messages bounce and the receiving mail-system sends the
bounce message back into the list instead of to the list's owner.
In such cases, it is of the utmost importance that the list's owner quickly determine
which recipient address is causing the problem and REMOVE
it as quickly as possible.
Until this is done, the resulting loop can cause hundreds
of messages to be sent to all the recipients in a matter of a few hours!
