Accounts & Passwords

Western's Mailing Lists and ListProc

Beginner's Guide

What lists are available?
How to subscribe
How to unsubscribe
Archives?
Getting information on a list
Requesting a list
Other mass communications technologies
Managing a list
What is ListProc?

What lists are available?

Send an email message to listproc@lists.wcu.edu. Leave the subject line blank. In the body, type only 'lists' (without the single-quotes).

e.g.

To:	listproc@lists.wcu.edu
Subj:
(body)	lists

How to subscribe

Send an email message to listproc@lists.wcu.edu. Leave the subject line blank. In the body, type the following, substituting your email address and name and the name of the list to which you wish to subscribe:

sub mylist abyron@wcu.edu Ada Byron

e.g.

To:	listproc@lists.wcu.edu
Subj:
(body)	sub programming abyron@wcu.edu Ada Byron

How to unsubscribe

Send an email message to listproc@lists.wcu.edu. Leave the subject line blank. In the body, type the following, substituting the name of the mailing list:

unsub mylist

e.g.

To:	listproc@lists.wcu.edu
Subj:
(body)	unsub programming

Archives?

Some lists are archived. If you're interested in reading the archives of existing lists, contact the list owner or send an email to the listmgr@lists.wcu.edu mailbox, which is monitored by a person. To determine the name and email address of the listowner, send an email message to listproc@lists.wcu.edu. Leave the subject line blank. In the body, type the following, substituting the name of the mailing list:

review mylist

e.g.

To:	listproc@lists.wcu.edu
Subj:
(body)	review programming

Getting information on a list

Send an email message to listproc@lists.wcu.edu. Leave the subject line blank. In the body, type the following, substituting the name of the mailing list:

review mylist
info mylist

e.g.

To:	listproc@lists.wcu.edu
Subj:
(body)	review programming info programming

Requesting a list

Before requesting that a mailing list be made available, consider a few aspects as to how mailing lists work. Some questions you might want to consider include:

1. Will the list be used to make announcements or to provide a discussion environment?
2. Will responses to messages distributed by way of a list be directed toward the sender or the list?
3. May all participants (subscribers) in the list take part in conservation or should it be limited to a few? May persons not subscribed to the list post messages to the list?
4. Should the list be archived?
5. Should the list be in digest form by default or should it send each message immediately upon posting? (When set to digest, only one message is sent per day - this message consists of all messages posted during the day.)
6. What's a good 2-5 word description of your mailing list? What would you like the list name (mailing address) to be? The briefer the list name, the easier the email address will be to construct (and type).

Once you've given these questions some consideration, call IT Services at 227-7ITS (227-7487) or email listmgr@lists.wcu.edu.

Other mass communications technologies

Western Carolina University offers a number of communications technologies, including mailing lists (as described herein) and discussion forums for courses (using Campus Pipeline). Also offered is the hypermail web archive service, which allows standard email messages to be posted to a set of web pages. For more information on choosing the service best suited to your needs, call 227-7ITS (227-7487) or send email to itshelp@wcu.edu.

Managing a list

When your list was created, you should have received information on how to post to the list, which includes the name of the list. Also at that time you should have received the list password. This password is needed in any list management functions mentioned below.

quiet add mylist password abyron@wcu.edu Ada Byron	Add Ada Byron as a subscriber to your 'mylist' mailing list. (The 'quiet' option suppresses a confirmation email to Ms. Byron
quiet del mylist password abyron@wcu.edu	Remove Ms. Byron as a subscriber to your list

If you have any other questions regarding your list, send an email to listmgr@lists.wcu.edu.

What is ListProc?

ListProc is a UNIX Mailing List Manager. ListProc is an automated information distribution and retrieval system for electronic mailing lists and file archives. ListProc is intended to be easy to maintain, support and use. It can also be integrated with other data retrieval and presentation tools such as gopher, anonymous ftp, http, and WAIS.

For more information, visit the ListProc website at http://listproc.sourceforge.net.