Managing Mailing Lists

Reader Luke Tymowski gets the credit for this review of another O'Reilly book, one whose subject probably would be useful to more people than books on any single programming language. The book is Managing Mailing Lists -- read on to see how Luke thinks this book stacks up even a few years after its release. Managing Mailing Lists author Alan Schwartz pages 261 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 8.5 reviewer Luke Tymowski ISBN 156592259x summary The definititive mailing list manager manual

The Scoop

You subscribe to a handful or more mailing lists. You decide to start one yourself to fill a hitherto ignored niche. Which Mailing List Manager (MLM) do you pick? Where do you find docs for them? And how best do you go about managing the list -- performing duties of list mom, keeping everyone on topic and trolls off the list?

Alan Schwartz's Managing Mailing Lists will be your trusty guide, provided, of course, you're using one of the MLMs he writes about (Majordomo, SmartList, LISTSERV Lite, Listproc). He summarises how mail and mailing lists work, the applicable RFCs, how to install and configure the MLMs, how to administer them, and provides a reference to each MLM. There's enough detail here to grow you from a basic, competent list administrator to a near-wizard.

What's to Like

Many of us may assume we already know all we need to know about the basics. I've been running my own server for several years, and I still learned a few things reading the introduction. In fact, it should be required reading for anyone running a mailing list, assuming they are not already in the wizard category. Too many list admins I know are comfortable running a list, but don't understand how all the components work together. Then they wet themselves when something doesn't work and they have no idea where to start looking for the problem.

Chapter 1 provides a quick tour of mail headers, the relevant RFCs, email programs (MUAs, eg, Mutt, Pine, Eudora), mail transport agents (MTAs, eg, Sendmail, Postfix, qmail, etc.), mail reflectors (eg, Sendmail's alias file), and, finally, mailing list managers -- what they do, don't do, what they do well, what they don't do well.

Chapter 2 describes how to design a mailing list, everything from naming a list, to posting guidelines, to moderated vs non-moderated, to exploders and newsgroups, to handling large lists, to choosing your MLM (philosophy, features, programming language and source availability). This is a long, detailed chapter with plenty of valuable tidbits for the budding list administrator.

Chapters 1 and 2 stand on their own as the best discussions of list construction, management and protocol that I've seen yet. Everyone running a list will find something of value here, whether technical or political.

Troubleshooting mailing lists is covered in Chapter 8 (why not chapter 3?), and, while it's very short, it is a good summary of what can go wrong and how to fix the problems. This is perhaps a more difficult issue today than when the book was published because in the fight to thwart spammers, it's getting more and more difficult to sort out just why some list members cannot receive or post mail.

Each MLM gets its own chapter to help you install and configure the product, a separate chapter to administer each MLM, and an appendix which summarises the commands and directory structures.

Did you know you can maintain your own lists with Sendmail? I didn't realise just how powerful it can be when combined with formail and procmail. While I use Postfix as my MTA, not Sendmail, Postfix is designed to replace Sendmail and therefore most of the tricks for managing lists with Sendmail work with Postfix. I spent a few entertaining hours exploring just what can be done with these few handy tools. Of course, neither Sendmail or Postfix are as powerful as dedicated MLMs, but you can still accomplish a great deal with them.

What's to Consider

The book is three years old. Each MLM was already a mature product when the book was written, and none have changed very much since 1998. The biggest change is perhaps with Listproc -- it's no longer free. But otherwise the products have undergone minor revisions, mostly bug fixes and small, new, features.

Mailman, the Gnu MLM isn't covered. But then Mailman either didn't exist in 1998 or it was too new to enjoy sufficient popularity to justify a chapter. qmail, which allows each user to create their own mailing lists, is mentioned, but isn't documented -- again probably because it didn't enjoy the popularity it has now.

Summary and Table of Contents

Managing Mailing Lists is still relevant despite its age. The introductory chapters are excellent and could hardly be improved upon if it were re-written today. If you're going to manage a mailing list and plan to use another MLM, Mailman for example, which is not documented in the book, it is still worthwhile buying a copy. If you already have some experience managing lists as either a list mom or server admin, you'll still learn something. It is, I think, one of the best O'Reilly books I've read -- and I've got a few shelves full of them.

1. Introduction
2. Designing a Mailing List
3. Maintaining Lists with Listproc
4. Maintaining Lists with Majordomo
5. Maintaining Lists with Smartlist
6. Maintaining Lists with LISTSERV Lite
7. Maintaining Lists with Sendmail
8. Troubleshooting Your Lists
9. Administering Listproc
10. Administering Majordomo
11. Administering Smartlist
12. Administering LISTSERV Lite

1. Listproc Reference
2. Majordomo Reference
3. LISTSERV Lite Reference

• Index

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

Comments

Hm

[strombrg]

No mailman?

'seems to be the big one these days. Maybe it wasn't, back when the book was written.

Egroups

[Theovon]

I find it easiest to just go to groups.yahoo.com and set up a mailing list on their servers.

Re:Egroups

[justinstreufert]

And I'm sure your subscribers enjoy all the little ads tacked on to every message. :)

Bad interface design

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

not sending admin commands to the list

As Jakob Nielsen says, "provide a special email address for each of the main commands: subscribe, unsubscribe, post discussion group message, etc. Keep the list short and there is a chance that users will understand it".

You should get better software if you can't get better users.

It's not the technology

[johnwbyrd]

I've set up and run mailing lists with hundreds of users, and one list has run continuously for nearly ten years. It strikes me that what these "introduction to mailing lists" books really need is a chapter on the practical, human aspects of running a mailing list. I think that most of the Slashdot crowd really wouldn't have any problems with the technology of mailing lists. The most difficult aspect of running a newspaper is not necessarily getting the type pressed upon the page.

If we take mailing list technology as a given, there are still some pieces of advice that I think are required for anyone running a mailing list:

- Always moderate your mailing list. There are too many e-mail worms and other nasty crap that happens via e-mail these days. It's possible to infect hundreds of people instantaneously via an unmoderated mailing list. This stuff can be caught if a human reads every submission.

- Moderate daily. People hate seeing their messages sit in queue for too long.

- Moderate mistakes. One-line "I agree" posts, "fuck you" posts, posts that clearly were not intended for the list, and empty posts should never go to the list.

- Resist the urge to limit discussion. If someone has an opinion that you disagree with, this is exactly the sort of thing that you want to see on your list. Most moderators make the mistake (as they do on Slashdot) that because they disagree with the poster's opinion, it shouldn't be seen by anyone. A healthy disagreement is critical to the survival of any online forum.