Mailing lists

Synopsis¶

MLs have been a vital part of the ISM‘s infrastructure since the beginning. They were/are the easiest technology for mass networking in the user’s point of view. Usenet does not rock that area anymore. Instead of that everyone gets her*his own copy of the distributed messages. This produces a lot of (redundant) data (which wants to be saved somewhere) but hey, it is easy to use tho.

List of mailing lists¶

• global
• admin, for the admin collective
• techies, an even broader group
• reclaim.education, organiztion ML for the “reclaim education”-newsletter

How to use mailing lists¶

Subscribe¶

global, admin, techies, reclaim.education
You want to get subscribed to the global mailing list. The others are for specific concerns which you will eventually find out.

Unsubscribe¶

Compare How do I unsubscribe from a list?. You can do it on your own. Do not write your signoff request to the list’s address! Read the FAQ first!

• global
• admin
• techies
• reclaim.education

Other frequently asked/answered questions¶

• How do I change my subscription address for all lists.riseup.net-subscriptions at once? (works on a per address basis)
• All other FAQ(frequently asked questions)

How to use a mailing list¶

There are some dos and don’ts.

Dos¶

• Send your follow-up either to the list’s address or the author of the first message depending who is the addressee of the message. Normally the author of the first message is a subscriber of the ML itself, too, and s*he would receive any message twice if you did not do so.
• Use reasonable subjects not longer than 72 characters.
• Quote your previous speaker (writer) where needed. Omit irrelevant parts by [...] without destroying the context. Irrelevant means the omitted parts do not have to do anything with your response.
• Use the reply-function of your MUA (“mail program”).

Don’ts¶

• Do not send your message to the list’s address and the author of the message you received via this particular list. Normally the author is already part of the list itself. S*he would receive the message twice if you did not follow that rule.
• Do not quote any previous messages without taking any reference to the.
• Do not do full quotes of any previous (long) messages. (five or less lines alone do not need to be shortened)
• Do not bother the mailing list with [imitating dumb person’s voice:] “Blah, I wanna get off this list”, “Duh, me too!”, “There is some reason, … explain reason …, that’s why I wanna get signed off the list”. For all this see § Unsubscribe from above. You can do it by your own! I believe in you!
• Do not make no usage of the reply-function though your reply has pretty close connection to the message you are about to reply. There are some covered data fields identifying your message as being a reply to someone other’s message. This allows programs to build a thread-tree. By composing a complete new message this data cannot be supplied.
• Do not change the subject (the title of the mail). The automatically prepended “Re: ” is OK. Consider starting a complete new thread by composing a complete fresh mail (no use of the reply-function) if your message introduces a complete new topic.