Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
stoparelay,asystemadministratorcouldblockallmessagesfromagivendomain
foraparticularperiodoftime.Thekeypoint,however,isthattheproblemisnot
areflectionofemailincompatibility,butratherareflectionofadomainissue.
Group addressing and listservers
When email is used to communicate with a moderate to large number of
people, as might be the case with a focus group, managing the address list can
leadtoseveralproblems.Ataminimum,iftherearemultipleexchangestothe
same group of recipients, then the group should be in an email client address
book.Mosteverymailclienthassomefunctionformaintainingaddressbooks.
However, if there is a need to share a group address, this becomes more diffi-
cult. In particular, if recipients need to be added and or subtracted more than
occasionally, then keeping the group address synchronized becomes onerous.
The solution to this is to create a group on a listserver.
Listservers(sometimescalledlistservs)areapplicationsthatrunonamailser-
vice provider server, and are used to maintain a possibly dynamic list of recipi-
ents.Participantsonthelistserveraddressmailtothelistserveraddress,andthe
listserver software handles the distribution to the actual recipients. A listserver
list has a designated owner, and there are usually several options for the list
ownertocontrolwhomayreadthelistandposttothelist.Typicallyausermust
submitarequesttojoinoraccessthelist;whichatminimummeansthatthelist-
server forwards messages addressed to the list to the user. It usually means that
the user may also send messages to the list; but this need not be so. Frequently
therearealsocontrolsthatenablethelistownertoallowonlyselectmembersto
post to the list and limit everyone to reading; or else allow the owner to moder-
ate,orselectivelyapprove,anysubmissionstothelist.Somelistserversalsohave
optionstomakethelistmessagearchiveavailableforsearchordownload.
Some of the many listserver products are Mailman (open source, Linux/Unix,
OSX, Windows) (http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/), LISTSERV (commer-
cial, Windows, Unix) (http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv.asp), Majordomo
(open source Linux/Unix) (http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/), and
MailList King (commercial, Windows) (http://www.xequte.com/maillistking/).
Anotheroptionistouseahostedservicesuchasthefree(ad-based)Yahoo!Groups
(http://groups.yahoo.com), or MSN Groups (http://groups.msn.com/home), or a
commercial hosted service like SimpleList (http://www.simplelists.com/). Yahoo!
GroupsandMSNGroupshavealimitationthatallmembersofoneoftheirgroups
must have Yahoo! Mail or MSN Live Mail mail accounts, respectively. This may
precludethesegroupmailserversfrommanysituations.
Things to consider before deciding on an option are ease of access, archiv-
ing needs, whether or not digesting is a necessary feature, and whether or not
there is a means for hosting a service independent from an online service. The
