Mailing lists - Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science

You can subscribe to most public Gina Cody School mailing lists by visiting the Mailing list overview page and selecting the list of your choice.

On this page you can get more information about the list, subscribe, unsubscribe, and change the preferences on your subscription.

To visit the general information page for an unadvertised list follow these steps:

1.  Visit https://mailman.encs.concordia.ca/mailman/listinfo/
2. Append a '/'  and the name of the unadvertised list to the end of the URL.
3. Push 'Enter' to display the page.

The following steps describe how to access your mailing list as a list administrator:

1. Locate the list on the admin list page, provided that you have the list's Administrator Password.
2. Type the List's Administrator Password and click 'Let me in...'

1. Visit your list's administrative interface. 
   The URL will follow this standard: https://mailman.encs.concordia.ca/mailman/admin/list-name-here
2. Enter your administrator password.
3. Subscribe your intended recipients by selecting Membership Management in the left column, followed by Mass Subscription.
4. Cut and paste your list of recipient addresses into the first box or export your list into a flat file (not an Excel file), and upload that file. Either way, once you have specified your list of recipients, click on Submit your changes.
5. Mailman should reply that it has subscribed the addresses successfully.

You can check that your addresses are really on the list by clicking on Membership List (under Membership Management).

Note: Do not subscribe yourself to the list, or you will have trouble posting.

Using your own email account, send a message to the list email address. Mailing lists follow this standard: list-name-here@encs.concordia.ca

Note: Posting to your list is restricted to a small number of addresses. If your account is not included and should be, add it to "accept_these_nonmembers", as explained in the List management section of this page.

You can check that your message has been sent by checking the List archives (right-hand column of list interface).

To remove a large number of subscribers, select Mass Removal (under Membership Management) and cut-and-paste or upload a file, just as you did for the subscriptions. Once this is complete, click on Submit your changes. Mailman should respond that it has unsubscribed your list of addresses. You can verify that this was successful by making sure that none of the addresses are listed under List Membership.

As a mailing list owner at ENCS, you will occasionally need to manage your list. In most cases your list will already be configured according to your needs, so you'll need to know how to use only a very small number of Mailman tasks.

Most things you do to your list will be as a result of receiving email notifications from Mailman. In those cases, Mailman will provide a URL that you will need to visit in order to take care of the pending action.
For all other tasks, visit the administrative interface of your list.

Responding to moderator requests:

When you receive an email from Mailman alerting you to do something, follow the URL provided in the message. There are two types of requests you will get:

• Subscription requests: If your list requires your approval to add members.
• Postings: Some posts need approval if your list doesn't allow just anyone to post. This also happens when a user who is not allowed to post has tried to send a message.

In each case, you must select one of four options:

• Defer: Don't decide yet, but instead, leave this request in the queue.
  
• Accept: Approve the subscription request (member will be added) or the posting (message will be sent to subscribers).
• Reject: Refuse the new member or the message (the requester will get a note telling them that their request was refused. This is the polite thing to do for most requests that you need to refuse).
• Discard: Quietly refuse the new member or the message (the requester will not be notified of your decision).

Once you have made a choice for each request by selecting the appropriate item, submit the page.

Membership management:

If you run a list where you need to explicitly add and delete members, visit the administrative interface of the list and select Membership Management.

Add allowed posters:

If your list allows only members to post, but some members post from an address different from their subscription address, you may need to add their posting address to "accept_these_nonmembers'  to avoid having to explicitly approve each of their postings. Mailman will give you an opportunity to do this from the Tend to pending moderator requests page found within the email notification.

You may also do this without the email notification but following these steps:

1. From the administrative interface, select Privacy options, then Sender filters.
2.  Scroll down to "accept_these_nonmembers".
3. Add the address on a new line and submit the page.

Similarly, if your list is moderated, you may want some people to be able to post directly without your approval. If the address you want to allow is a list member, select Membership management and turn off the moderation flag (by unchecking the "mod" checkbox) for that user. If the address you want to allow is not a list member, add them to "accept_these_nonmembers" by following the procedure in the instructions above.