Starting in Fall of 2006, the Life Sciences Computing Facility has started using Mailman as our listserver software for all of our electronic email classlists. This software has a good feature-set and includes instructor control of postings, archiving of messages. The archived messages can be viewed by date, author, subject or thread. We have also made a minor modification to the naming of the lists so that each list will be available for posting after the class has formally ended. The naming convention will include the course name as well as the quarter (f=Fall, w=Winter, s=Spring, m=Summer). For example, the classlist for mcdb101a offered in the Fall would be: mcdb101a-f@mentor.lscf.ucsb.edu
The procedures for managing subscriptions and posting to the Mailman classlists are as follows:
- Enrolled students will be added to the courselist only at the beginning of the quarter. As students add themselves to a class, they will need to subscribe to the list. The URL for students to add themselves to a course is:
http://mentor.lscf.ucsb.edu/mailman/listinfo/ <list name>
For example, http://mentor.lscf.ucsb.edu/mailman/listinfo/mcdb1a-f
If a student wishes to unsubscribe from the list, they would use the same URL as above. When the student completes and submits the above form, they will receive an email asking them to visit a webpage to confirm their (UN)subscription. PLEASE NOTE THAT THERE HAVE BEEN SOME CASES WHERE THESE EMAILS HAVE BEEN DELIVERED TO THEIR SPAM MAILBOX (eg. Hotmail).
- Faculty will be given the role of "moderators" of their classlist. As such, they will not be a member of the list, but will be able to post to the list (with an emailed URL asking for confirmation for the posting). If instructors would ALSO like to be a member of the list to receive copies of their emails, they should subscribe to the list NOT using the same address which they have as "moderator". Ideally, instructors would use a gmail, hotmail or yahoo account as a member of the list.
- The emails which have been sent to the list can be sorted and viewed by visiting the following archive URL:
http://mentor.lscf.ucsb.edu/pipermail/ <list name>
For example, http://mentor.lscf.ucsb.edu/pipermail/mcdb101a-f/
Please note that visiting the archive will allow a poster to see that messages sent to the list have actually gone out.
- Passwords for the "moderator" role will be emailed to instructors. Courses can have multiple moderators, although each moderator will receive any requests for approval of posting of messages or granting of subscriptions to the list.
- Features of the list are configurable including permissions for subscriptions and who is allowed to post. These can be changed by request of the instructor:
- SUBSCRIPTIONS- Default - Requires the moderator approve all (un)subscriptions. Can be changed so that anyone can (un)subscribe without moderation.
- POSTING: Default -Posting by "moderator" requires confirmation and the email address of the "moderator" must not be a member of the list. The email post of any (non)member of the list except "moderators" will not be allowed with the sender receiving a note indicating that they do not have permission to post to the list. This will also apply to members of the list attempting to "Reply" to a message posted to the list. Please note that the list(s) can be configured so that any member of the list is able to post to the list without "moderator" approval. This may be most appropriate for smaller seminar style courses where instructors want to facilitate peer-to-peer communication.
IF your have any questions concerning the above, please feel free to contact us at computer-support@mentor.lscf.ucsb.edu.
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