Listserv provides members of the Dartmouth community with a high-performance mailing list management system.
About Listserv
Dartmouth College licenses the Listserv software from L-Soft Corporation. Listserv provides members of the Dartmouth community with a high-performance mailing list management system. Every Listserv list hosted at Dartmouth must have an owner listed in the Dartmouth Name Directory. Listserv is a mechanism for managing a list when any or all of the following characteristics are necessary:
- World wide advertisement of the topic.
- Automatic processing of subscription and sign-off requests.
- Automatic maintenance of archives of postings. These archives can be retrieved by e-mail or searched and read via a Web interface.
- Automatic formation of daily digests of postings.
- Control of the posting process, including moderation, limitations on service area, or limiting the ability to post to subscribers or editors.
- The number of subscribers is potentially large (over 1,000) or widely distributed geographically.
Listserv supports mailing lists within the College. Alumni should direct their requests for creation of lists to Jan Bent in Alumni Relations.
Listserv at Dartmouth runs on a dedicated host computer, "listserv.dartmouth.edu". List owners can control all aspects of a list's operation by using BlitzMail or any other mail system that can handle Internet mail. There can be no more than one list owner who is responsible for managing the list, but there can be additional titular owners. The most onerous aspect of managing large lists is processing the undeliverable mail resulting from subscriber addresses that become invalid. The Listserv software tries to delete addresses that become invalid, but will refer some of the questionable mail to the owner. On large active lists, processing the undeliverable mail can be labor intensive.
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Requesting a List
To build a new list, you will need to provide the Dartmouth Listserv Postmaster with the following information. This will enable the list to be set up and conform to your specifications:
- List Name: The list Name must be between 1 and 40 non-blank characters long. Mixed case and numbers are allowed, but most special characters, other than the hyphen and underscore, are not permitted. In practice, list names longer than 20 characters make it more difficult for the subscriber.
- List Title: The list Title must be between 1 and 40 characters long. Mixed case and non-alphanumeric characters are allowed. The list Title is used in the From address of list mail, and in the authoritative list-of-lists (for example, Cabin-Trail).
- List Description. The list Description describes the reason for the list and the target audience. The only restriction that applies is that the description must be less than 60 characters.
- Reply (List | Sender): When a subscriber replies to a posting, should the reply go to all the subscribers (List) or only to the individual who posted the original message (Sender)?
- Confidential (Yes | No): Should the list be visible to the international list-of-lists (No), or will the list be confidential (Yes)? If confidential, the existence of the list will be by word-of-mouth only.
- Service (Local | Unlimited): Will the service area be international (Unlimited), or limited to the dartmouth.edu and hitchcock.org domains (Local)?
- Subscription (Public | By_owner): Will the subscription application be open to the public (Public), or by permission of the owner only (By_Owner)?
- Owner (DND listed e-mail address): What is the owner(s) e-mail address where they want to receive Listserv-related e-mail?
- Send (Public | By_Owner): Will the distribution of e-mail be immediate and unmoderated (Public), or will the postings require confirmation by an editor before they are distributed (By_Owner)?
- Send (Public | Private): Are the subscribers to the list the only people allowed to post (Private), or can anyone who knows about the list post to the list (Public)?
- Archives (Public | Private | No): Should archives of the postings be kept? If so, should the archives be available to the public (Public) or only to the list subscribers (Private). If archives exist, what is the desired period of consolidation: weekly, monthly, or annually? What is the retention period for the archives?
- WWW (Yes | No): If the archives are public, should they also be available on the Web?
- Default-options (Mail | Digest): Listserv can dispatch postings immediately (Mail), or accumulate them into a digest that is posted once a day (Digest). What is the subscribers default method of delivery, Mail or Digest?
- Review (Public | Private | By_Owner): Should the identity of the members of the list be confidential, or can the list be visible to the world (Public), to other subscribers (Private), or to the owner (By_Owner) only.
- Listserv can automatically distribute a welcome message to new subscribers. It is a good idea to use this message to state the policies of the list, especially concerning inappropriate practices such as personal attacks by e-mail, sometimes called "flaming."
To get an idea of the responsibility of the owner of the list, peruse the commands commonly used to manage a list.
Answers to the above questions can be submitted via e-mail to the Listserv Postmaster. The Listserv Postmaster can also answer any additional questions you may have. Listserv is a powerful mailing list management system, and the options above merely define a basic list. Many additional features are available including:
- Probing questionable addresses.
- Confirming subscription requests.
- Automatically deleting failed addresses.
- Rotating editors.
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Managing a List
A Listserv mailing list can be managed by using e-mail or the Web interface. At Dartmouth, the list Owner usually uses BlitzMail to manage the list. Every list has two addresses associated with it. The first address is listserv@dartmouth.edu; this is the Listserv system. All commands are mailed to this address. The other address is the posting address, listname@listserv.dartmouth.edu (e.g., Cabin-Trail@listserv.dartmouth.edu). Many of the lists are set up so that a list alias on the campus mail server can redirect mail to the posting address. This allows mail to be sent to listname@dartmouth.edu where it will be distributed to all subscribers of a list.
List Management Via the Web Interface
An interactive product demonstration of the Web interface is available on the L-Soft Web site.
List Management Via E-mail
To control a list, you can send e-mail to listserv@dartmouth.edu with the command in the body of the mail message. The most frequently used commands include:
Subscribers
- SUBscribe listname your name: Adds a user to the list of subscribers (e.g., SUB Cabin-Trail Jacob Jones).
- SIGNOFF listname: Removes a user from the list of subscribers (e.g., SIGNOFF Cabin-Trail).
- REView listname: Sends the user a list of the subscribers (e.g., REV Cabin-Trail).
- INDEX listname: Sends the user a list of the archive files (e.g., INDEX Cabin-Trail).
- SEND filename: Sends the user an archive file listed by the INDEX command (e.g., SEND Cabin-Trail.LOG0701E).
Owners
- ADD listname emailaddress firstname lastname: Adds a subscriber to the list and notifies the subscriber of the addition (e.g., ADD Cabin-Trail Jacob.Jones@dartmouth.edu Jacob Jones). If the name fields contain non-alphabetic characters, they must be enclosed in quotation marks (e.g. ADD Cabin-Trail Jacob.Jones@dartmouth.edu "Dr. Jacob Jones").
- QUIET DELete listname emailaddress: Removes a subscriber from the list, but does not notify the subscriber of the deletion (e.g., QUIET DEL Cabin-Trail Jacob.Jones@dartmouth.edu).
- GET listname (NOLOCK): Returns the list of subscribers, including any concealed subscribers without removing the list from service [e.g., GET Cabin-Trail (NOLOCK)].
- GET listname (NOLOCK HEADER): Returns the configuration information about a list without locking the list [e.g., GET Cabin-Trail (NOLOCK HEADER)].
Listserv is a rich environment. There are facilities that control Web distribution of archives, topics within a list, automatically deleting failed addresses, and many other features. Documentation is available on the L-Soft Website.
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