Department of Engineering

Applying for a mailing list

All requests for engineering mailing lists at lists.cam.ac.uk must be handled via postmaster to ensure that interactions with engineering mail aliases will work correctly.

Please email us at postmaster-alias with your request. It helps if you can consider the following issues:

1. Naming.

   lists.cam.ac.uk list names should normally be of the form eng-whatever-eng-list which would link to whatever-eng-list@eng.cam.ac.uk, with the exception of engineering lists which are of the form eng-something@eng.cam.ac.uk, where the lists version can be eng-something@lists.cam.ac.uk.

   For example eng-test@eng.cam.ac.uk corresponds to eng-test@lists.cam.ac.uk, but admin-all@eng.cam.ac.uk corresponds to eng-admin-all@lists.cam.ac.uk.

   See here for conventions for the whatever-eng-list part.
   

2. A brief Description

   Each list needs a brief one-line description of the list's purpose. This will usually indicate the intended users of the list or the subject matter of the list. Examples include:

   • All members of MEG - eng-meg-all
   • Institute for Manufacturing general enquiries - eng-ifm-enquiries
   • MLP alumni - eng-mlp-alumni
   • HTK toolkit developer discussion - eng-htk-developers
   
   
3. The Security Status of the list.

   This is changeable after the initial setup. The options and when they are appropriate are given below:

   • Open - anyone, anywhere will be able to mail to all the list. The Computing Service recommend this option should never be used for a list which has more than about 100 members, and we recommend it isn't used for any list of more 10 people. It is appropriate for addresses which need to be externally visible and accessible, e.g. enquiry points, course administrator addresses etc.
   • OpenCam - anyone in the cam domain (with an e-mail address ending cam.ac.uk ) will be able to mail to the list. This is probably of limited use to us - might be appropriate for an enquiry point only expected to be used by current students or staff.
   • Closed - only list members, managers and authorised senders will be able to mail to the list. The Computing Service recommend that large lists should be at least closed. This option is appropriate for most discussion lists and some announcement lists, and is probably appropriate for most Engineering Department lists. Messages from non-members will be sent to the list moderators who can decide whether to pass the message on to the rest of the list.
   • Restricted - only the list moderators and authorised senders can freely post to the list. This is useful for informational lists where only a small number of people need to send to the list.
   • Secure - each message must be explicitly approved by list moderators. This is most appropropriate for very large lists with small amounts of legitimate traffic.

   For Closed, Restricted and Secure lists we recommend that a separate set of moderators is set up: this needs to be done after the list is set up. If no moderators list is set up then all the managers are assumed to be moderators, and while it is useful for a postmaster to be a manager (to deal with incorrect list entries), postmaster doesn't normally want to see all the messages needing moderation.
   

4. List managers, moderators and authorised senders.

   When we set up the list we will add the requestor and both postmasters as managers, but for all lists except for Open lists with a small number of recipients we recommend that a set of moderators are also added. The functions of the different roles are:

   • Managers.
     The list manager is responsible for adding and removing people from the list. They should verify that only appropriate people are added to the list including verifying that external addition requests have come from an address that really does want to be added to the list by sending an appropriate verification message and getting a positive reply. They should also regularly process fail reports and explicit requests to remove addresses which are no longer valid or required. It is expected that the manager from the group will do most of this work, and will add other managers from the group where required: the presence of a postmaster as manager is intended to provide emergency cover only.
   • Moderators.
     The list manager can add moderators, and is is expected that all non-Open lists will have at least two moderators. Postmaster will not normally be a moderator. The moderator is sent all messages from non-authorised sources, and can either throw them away, or pass them on to the list (the message the moderator gets tells you how).
   • Authorised Senders.
     These are people who can send messages to the list who would not normally be able to do so for lists which are OpenCam, Closed or Restricted. This is mostly useful where someone may be subscribed to the list wth one address, but sometimes needs to post messages from another (e.g. subscribed with userid@eng.cam.ac.uk, but sending from userid@hermes.cam.ac.uk).
   
   
5. The Visibility of the list

   The list can be:

   • Public - the list membership will be visible to Hermes users; or
   • Private - the list membership will be invisible to Hermes users.

   We recommend Private for most Engineering lists.

Once the list parameters are agreed postmaster will apply for the mailing list(s) via the CS's online webform at http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/request/grpresources.html. When the list has been issued initial adjustments to the manager list are made and a moderators list is set up. Postmaster will then set up the appropriate aliases at Engineering to allow the list to be accessed either via group-example@eng.cam.ac.uk or eng-group-example@lists.cam.ac.uk.

When considering appropriate uses of mailing lists, list managers should bear in mind the guidelines in http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/itsyndicate/bulkemail.html. Detailed instructions on managing lists lists are available at http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/docs/leaflets/g90.

See list naming conventions for local conventions on appropriate list names.