What Is a Mailing List?
Setting up Your Own Lists
How to Manage a List
How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe
Sending a Message to the List
Getting Help
"Administrative" Mailing Lists at Davis of Use to ANR

What Is a Mailing List?

The email discussion group or list is one of the most popular methods of group communication on the Internet. Discussion groups, also called "mailing lists," "mailing groups," and "exploders," are much like conventional postal mailing lists. Anything sent to the list goes to everyone on it. These electronic mailing lists are maintained on large, centralized computers equipped with mailing list management programs. Three common mailing list programs are listproc, LISTSERV, and majordomo. These programs are designed to copy and distribute electronic mail to everyone subscribed to a particular mailing list. The program on the UC Davis computer is listproc.

Some mailing lists are two-way forums in which anyone can post a message to the mailing list and everyone will receive it. These are true discussion groups. Other mailing lists are one-way, where only one or two people are allowed to post messages.

Setting up Your Own Lists

If you want to set up a new email list, go to

http://email.ucdavis.edu/eml/request.php

Select "Standard listproc mailing list." You will be asked for the following:

Suggested name of list (should be descriptive of the list's purpose)

Brief description (a one-line description that will describe the list to prospective subscribers)

List administrator (the person who will maintain the list -- you?)

There are several options for the list you can also set, these include:

          Postings allowed by: anyone; only subscribers; only list owners.

          Mail moderataion: whether the owner has to approve a posting to the list or not

          Spam filtering: turn it on and let the campus delete spam being sent to the list.

You will be notified within a day or two when the list is ready for use. Then you can tell colleagues about the list, ask them to subscribe, and begin discussion.

How to Manage a List

You can add or delete subscribers, add a welcome message, change owners, or set mailing list options at

http://listproc.ucdavis.edu/listproc/manage.html

How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Subscribing or unsubscribing to a list is very easy. You can manage your UC Davis list subscriptions at

http://listproc.ucdavis.edu/listproc/sub.html

Sending a Message to the List

To send a message to the list, place MAILLIST@ucdavis.edu at the To: prompt of your mail message, where "MAILLIST" is the name of the mailing list. Then type your message. Remember that unless the list is monitored, everyone who subscribes to the list will get a copy of your email message. Here is a sample address:

To: calendar-mg@ucdavis.edu

Getting Help

More information on electronic mailing lists is available at

http://email.ucdavis.edu/

"Administrative" Mailing Lists at Davis of Use to ANR Personnel

There are a number of "administrative" mailing lists for ANR use on the Davis campus computer. These are mailing lists for groups like county offices and specialists, rather than topic-oriented discussion groups for topics like wildlife or sustainable agriculture. Here are some of the "administrative" lists that are currently active:

danr-spec@ucdavis.edu (ANR Extension Specialists)

ce-counties@ucdavis.edu (UC Cooperative Extension County Offices)

ce-cdirectors@ucdavis.edu (UC Cooperative Extension County Directors)

caes-spec@ucdavis.edu (CA&ES Extension Specialists [Davis])

cnas-spec@ucdavis.edu (CNAS Extension Specialists [Riverside])

cnr-spec@ucdavis.edu (CNR Extension Specialists [Berkeley])

ncm-counties@ucdavis.edu (North Coast and Mountain Region)

ccs-counties@ucdavis.edu (Central Coast and Southern Region)

cv-counties@ucdavis.edu (Central Valley Region)

To send a message to one of these mailing lists you would simply send an email with the list address in the To: field. For example, to send a message to all county offices send an email message to

ce-counties@ucdavis.edu