On The Use Of Multiple Company Mailing Lists 14
DippyOz asks: "We have a debate raging at work about mailing lists that I hope the Slashdot community can shed some light on. I would like to have three or four internal mailing lists with each having a very focused topic and rules. Our staff can join whichever lists they feel they need to join to do their daily jobs. Our IT manager is against this, preferring the one general mailing list to which all staff subscribe. No list will have very high traffic, as they will mostly be used for company and software announcements. Which would be better?" Although this is highly subjective, I think this is an interesting question. Could those of you who work in companies that use mailing lists comment on what has and hasn't worked for your offices?
Depends on the contents.. (Doesn't everything?) (Score:2)
This is the case where subject keywords can be a big help. As long as users remember to put the right keyword in the subject of their posts, filtering and skimming becomes alot easier. This does necessitate some level of clueful users, however.
If the lists will have very little or no overlapping subjects, I say the best way to do them is to split them up. This also helps ensure that people will be reading stuff that is relevant and interesting to them, and therefore it's more likely to be useful and stay focused and productive.
All major mailing list software allows you to keep online archives, so you can keep those on a sensible place on the Intranet for users who might want to casually browse other lists or go back and re-read threads from days past.
Also, you haven't mentioned doing this yet, but it would be a good idea to ask the staff what they think, too
Adam
Must be a small office.... (Score:3)
Last place I worked we had over a hundred mailing lists and only around 200 employees. Admittedly, many were for use by users of the website, but there was almost always a list for each project going on (and usually two or three.)
The worst part was the admin work dealing with these lists. When the first few lists were set up, no one had any idea how fast the number of lists would grow. Only the sysadmins could create/make changes to the lists and there were no automated tools to add new employees to the correct lists, remove terminated employees, etc. Lots of time wasted by the admins when they could have been doing things to make everyone's lives easier.
So my suggestion to your IT director would be to set something up like MajorCool where the users can create and manage their own lists. Even if you only need one today, you're gonna need more tomorrow. 'cause someday HR is gonna figure out that they really don't want contractors seeing mail about benefits that is sent to the everyone list and demand another one. And it just gets worse from there.
Multiple... (Score:3)
For a tech company for instance:
tech@ (coders, engrs, peeps interested in tech) (informal)
engr@ (all engrs, formal)
staff@ (everyone, informal)
employee@ (everyone, moderated, formal)
mrkt@ (informal, anyone into marketing info)
mrkt-staff@ (formal, all marketing)
.... you get the picture.
It makes it easy to sift though a lot of mail. Nothing critical would be on an informal list and could be deleted if needed. But, it leaves a place for important messages that must be read.
-Davidu
I dont want to sound like a troll... (Score:2)
I used to like Ask Slashdot, because after i had resigned to the fact that there were goign to be no more new stories posted for the next 10 minutes, i had better spend my time learning something on Ask Slashdot
It seems that over the last few months more and more questions relate to things that are almost exactly the same as the prime question answered in the freely and easily available HOWTO's or FAQ's.
And then there have been a new breed of questions floating around, which just contain stupid ideas than no one has put any thought into before allowing them to be posted on Ask Slashot. For example, I think if i asked
Which brings me back to this particular question regarding mailing lists. What did the poster really want to acheive by asking slashdot ? I mean, its quite obvious that we have no understanding of the workings of his workplace, and the issue of mailinglists is hardly a well defined topic, with justification for any answer other than personal choice. What was the poster expecting to find -- someone who was a guru in the art of carefully crafting the number of mailing lists in a corporate environment for maximising staff efficiency, happiness, inter-departmental communication and server loading ?... Oh yeah, I think there is an O'Reilly book out there on it, and RFC-743856 goes over the IEEE x782 spec for number of mailing lists really well....
The only reason why i can imagine that this person felt like posting this question was just to 'get something on slashdot'...
Basically the only response they will get will be from people who like most of the people who post questions, only understand a small fraction of the issue at hand, but continue to act as if they know what they are on about.. I call this the Guru in a Can or GIC phenomenon. They are geeks or pseudo-geeks who pretend to be Mr Smarty Pants.. irc is full of them, and slashdot is too.. anyway, thats a totally different rant...
Lets look at some recent posts to Ask Slashot
Pen Based OS On the Net - the person said they looked and couldnt find a free OS for a pen based wierdo computer... What they really wanted to find :
Followup to the Hackers Diet - Some guy is proud that he looks less like RMS, and more like some skinny type guy.. What they really wanted to find
Losing my love of PERL asks how to send an attachment from the NT command line -- well i ask How do i optimise my asm level pthreads implementation on my HP-42S calculator.. but at least i dont ask it in public where I know the question is not of general value
Computers as microwave - Some putz has put together the idea of a flucluating electric current and magnetic radiation and is all impressed at how smart they are.. Well Mr Smarty Pants, Robert Maxwell thought the same things at the turn of last century, and Im pretty sure the Big Chip Dudes at intel/amd/motorola are familiar with a bit of Electromag theory - and the prolly are very well aware of the em emissions of their chips.. So whats your fscking point ?? -- you are just posting this because you want to look like a Mr Smarty Pants ala JEFF-K [somethingawful.com]... nuff said.
PS. this is a great example of a Geek in a Can question
Cryptograpic IRC - freshmeat.
Unix Software for Molecular Biology - freshmeat
anyway.. the list goes on... If andover want to give me a job answering the large number of noise posts that are infecting what was otherwise a clean signal, sure.. email me.
I think i could even write a program (whilst wearing my Mr Smarty Geek Coder Pants), that would answer any imaginable ask slashdot with :
Whilst i have your attention i might ask a quick question
How would I go about writing a program in Perl/Scheme/Lisp/PDP-11 asm that would take user input in string based english format over the web and interpret the string with a neural network running on a cluster of computers running either Linux, FreeBSD or GNU/Hurd on embedded machines running on a 0.04micron architecture (perhaps based on technology found in the soon to be announced Playstation 3). This software would need strong crypto to protect the privacy of its end users. It would then answer peoples questions!!
Some more ask slashdot questions:
I got drunk last night, and i cant find my car keys, has anyone seen them?
Why is AOL always busy ?
I have this cool idea, i started C programming last week and i want to write an operating system with in built 3d accelleration so that i can run Daikatatana at 1289 fps, but im having problems making printf work ?
and then there is the whole gammut of posts which a co-worker variously describes as pseudo-contoversy/beating the dead-horse/argument for sake of argument... these posts generally ask a question which is known to generate the same old arguemnts with basically everyone agreeing... the questions are things like "Corporate giant X has release device Y but is not providing drivers for linux. Is this a bad thing ?" -- yeah, like some slashdot readers are going to say "No, its not a bad things, drivers should be closed source so that companies like microsoft can get more money"
Other questions in this ilk include "Is WAVE profiling of geeks a bad thing?", "Are the US crypto export rules bad?", "Is the RIAA are bunch of well educated open minded professionals, representing the needs of the common artist?"
Oh, and by the way, anything i have said here also goes for the general articles that have been posted to slashdot... double posts aside (yes, i can understand that people who have been given moderator god rights are obviously to busy to check out what has been posted in the last 24 hours before they post the same thing over and over and over...). One article that totally pissed me off was the one a few hours ago about Be discontinuing its developemnt of BeOS. The moderator did the right thing and checked if there was any basis in the post, found that there was none- said there was none in the post, but posted it anyway!!! WTF!@ I mean, its bad enough when things get posted like that NSAKEY thing from ages ago in Win 9x, with no basis in fact other than in the minds of a few consipiracy junkies who would jump Scully at any given chance.. But to post something knowing that its wrong -- i mean, how is that news ? for nerds or otherwise ??
I really should get back to work.....
email: alancox-AT-i2pi.SOME-SPAM-BOT-IS-REALLY-GONNA-STE
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You Need This Book... (Score:2)
It's an O'Reilly book, should be easy to find.
Solution... (Score:2)
qmail [qmail.org] with ezmlm [cr.yp.to] is your solution. Use it instead of sendmail. To create a mailing list, you put a file in your home directory called .qmail-listname, and use the address yourlogin-listname, and qmail does the right thing (instant listserver! No admin needed!). There is even a couple of web-based interfaces (EZmlm-Web 1.02 [associate.com] and another one here [virtation.com]) for adding and deleting users from a list.
qmail is pretty sweet anyway, you should be using it.
darren
Cthulhu for President! [cthulhu.org]
Re:I dont want to sound like a troll... (Score:2)
Nice one.
Also, the Ask /. that will get posted, but won't have any real responses (oh wait, Jon Katz wrote an article on it...)
I can't get a date, since I never shower or even leave my computer chair. Can I use strong crypto with Linux or GNU/Hurd to solve this condition? Do I need clustering software? How would I do this, and would I have to GPL my girlfriend? Looks like what all of us have been dying to know. Let's help him (and the rest of us out! UPDATE: Turns out that women are all repelled by this subject, so let's just fight over the GPL some more... m'kay?
That'd be posted in a second 8^)
Re:I dont want to sound like a troll... (Score:1)
Natilie Portman slashdotted and petrified..
But yeah, i like the question.
Re:You Need This Book... (Score:1)
Mr Smarty Pants Post! (Score:1)
Re:Multiple... (Score:1)
The policy for conduct on the mailing lists must be clear. Your workplace probably already has some sort of acceptable use policy - no downloading porn on company time, no racial jokes, etc. Someone I know got fired for sending a single off-colour joke over the company network to another employee, and that's a lousy way for someone to lose a job and a company to lose an employee. If the mailing lists that you spearheaded end up causing problems like that, it's going to be egg on your face.
Having each list tagged as Formal or Informal as David suggested is a good idea - the Formal lists are for work related materials only, and the Informal lists allow a bit of chatter, discussion about the upcoming paintball games, whatever, as long as it doesn't violate the companies electronic conduct policy.
Something else that bears mention: The staff has to be aware of these lists. They have to know when a new one is started, they have to know where they can read the logs, they have to have a reference for the common commands, etc.
They have to know how to UNSUBSCRIBE. Anyone who's run a mailing list knows that getting people who can't be bothered to remember the unsubscribe command - or save the "Welcome to the list, here's the commands you'll need" email - is one of the most requested things, and also a hassle.
Adam
Re:Multiple... (Score:2)
Formal and informal. Excellent idea.
Right now we have one engineering mailing. That list is perminantly archived because one purpose is sending "implimentation Proposal for filesystem layout on [codename]". Most of the messages to that list though are of the form "Its my brithday, so I brought donuts for everyone in the usual spot", or "I have a doctors appt so you won't find me in today." The latter two need not be archived as they have no perminant value. The first has prminant value and should be saved (even if someone comes up with a good objection and you redo the proposal)
We end up being all on the same list because each department has a list, and then there is an all-engineering list. The department list works great for projects small enough that everyone is under the same boss. For projects too big for one boss it doesn't work, (Joe works for someone else, but he wanted my help this week on a cross functional problem so he has to know I'm not in) And the donuts message really doesn't need to go to those people who sit across the street from me, but the person next to me isn't in the same department but he should get it. (The person who sits next to me often works with me though our specaltie areas are obviously seperate)
In other words you need lists for a) geography, b) formal proposeals in a project, c) departments (My boss still needs to send only his people a mail), d) projects, e) the whole company.
And this is impossibal because I'm not capable of keeping track of that many lists and then making the reight decision on which it should go to. Well, I can but it requires that I have a list of each and takes time. Not to mention admin time on your part. Pick the subsets that seem to make the most sense. (You need an all company after that guess) I probably forgot a type of list you need, so if something else fits your needs better don't be afraid to add one.
Remember, lists are dynamic. You can add more latter, or delete some if they turn out to be useless. (but seperate useless from seldom used. The all company list shouldn't be used often, but when it is used you need it)
Don't use mailing lists. Use newsgroups. (Score:1)
Use internal company newsgroups. For those (few) people whom you can't allow access to the news server, or simply won't read news, add a mailnews gateway.
This gives all sorts of benefits - if you set expiration to never, you get a permanent archive of all messages, and it's searchable. Even better, new employees (or new team/project members) can review old postings without having to pester someone for their email archives (and hope that they're complete).
Newsreaders are built into Netscape, IE, and look much like email to the user. People who use separate email programs may be tougher to convert.
Re:Don't use mailing lists. Use newsgroups. (Score:1)
I think if the majority of employees are used to using email and are comfortable with it, mailing lists are probably the wiser choice. But if the shop is primarily a bunch of computer gurus, they might appreciate the flexability of newsgroups.
Perhaps important/time sensitive material could go out via mailing lists, and newsgroups could be used for the rest.
As for it being hard or impossible to remember which groups exist, I suppose it depends on the list software - Mailman generates a HTML page with the names of all the public lists, descriptions, and links to the subscription/options pages. And the web interface is plenty handy, although the admin web interface leaves something to be desired, especially for larger lists.
Adam