Setting up an email list

Ben needed to get the people in his local group of permaculture enthusiasts in touch with each other, discuss upcoming events and keep each other up to date. People were always coming and going from the group and he was finding it difficult to keep the list of email addresses together. He’d heard about mailing lists, had been on a couple of them and now wanted to set one up and run it himself.

There are basically two ways to set up and run a mailing list. The first is simply to maintain a list of contacts which you include in the to: or cc: field when you send an email. For anything other than the smallest and most temporary of purposes, this method is a very bad idea. The second is to use a dedicated mailing list server (often referred to as listservs). These can handle large lists which you simply can’t do reliably manually.

The mailing list server allows people to subscribe to or unsubscribe from the list (with your permission, if you prefer) and handles security and privacy much better, so members of the list don’t automatically know the email addresses of all the other members. The list server software also creates automatic archives which can be very useful.

By comparison, the problems with manual cc lists include serious security implications and privacy issues. It is very easy for the list of contacts to become out-of-date and for people to get left off some replies, particularly as people don't always know of - or use - the 'Reply all' option for emails. You have to add and remove addresses manually yourself and that can be a real chore. For everyone's sake, you shouldn’t be doing it this way at all!

Back to listservs… Email lists are great tools and are normally used for one of two purposes:

• An announce list: used for news bulletins, simply to keep people informed. Only certain people on the list are allowed to send to it, although everyone can receive email.

• A discussion list: used when everyone on the list can contribute. Discussion lists may or may not be moderated. Moderated lists have people doing admin who read contributions to the list and check that they are suitable for the list before allowing them through to all the members. This avoids spam and off-topic posts from cluttering up people's inboxes.

Consider the following points when creating lists:

• open or closed: can anyone subscribe or do subscriptions need to be approved?
• public or private: is the list to be advertised to the world, or is it run on a need to know basis?
• announce or discussion: is the list for receiving information only or for discussing something in particular?
• moderated or not: are posts to the list to be moderated?

Collectives that provide mailing lists include the following:

• aktivix.org
• riseup.net
• psand.net