E-mail based "discussion
groups" or "lists" are one heavily used mechanism for group communication on the
Internet, and one of the most popular of these is named ListProc.
Listproc can can also be used as an effective mechanism for one-way distribution
of information, such as d'vrei Torah and meeting minutes. (The UAHC msgs.pl CGI script can be
used to implement a Web-based discussion group.)
URJ maintains several ListProc discussion groups that serve
the entire Reform Movement. A congregation can establish discussion groups for
its own purposes by signing up with Shamash, which asks for $50 per
list, per year, in order to support their costs.
While establishing a
ListProc discussion group is not very difficult, it does require a person who
has the time to maintain it. The person or people responsible for the
list must understand the tools provided and be willing to manage subscriptions
and error messages and to monitor list activity.
It is essential that
a list owner read the information linked under ListProc-- List
Owners/Managers on the Shamash Help
Page, and especially the Shamash Acceptable Use Policy
as it pertains to lists. A further understanding of the responsibilities and
tasks necessary to moderate a discussion group can be gained from Information
for the Start of a New Volume written by Daniel Faigin, moderator of the
long-standing Mail.Liberal-Judaism discussion
group.
Each list should have a
"welcome" file that contains information about how to use the list. It is
also a good idea to prepare a web page that contains similar information as was
done for the lists urj-web and
temple-chat.
The most frequently used
ListProc commands are:
- review - to request
the current configuration of list parameters and list subscribers
- add [listname]
[password] [email address] [name] - to add subscriber [name] with [email
address] to the list
- dele [listname]
[password] [email address] - to delete the subscriber with [email address]
from the list
- alias [listname]
[password] [additional address] [current address] - to add a an additional
address for an existing subscriber, enabling submissions from multiple sources
(see examples below)
- put [listname]
[password] [filename] followed by the new file contents - to change the
contents of the named file, most often "welcome", and "info"
- edit [listname]
[password] [filename] - to download the contents of the named file, prior to
editing and "putting"
If a congregation requests a
Shamash discussion group, we suggest consideration of the following
recommendations when filling out the Shamash list request form:
To learn more about ListProc
mailing lists at Shamash, please send mail to help@shamash.org.
Examples of the "alias"
command
The alias command is
used in cases where a subscriber needs to be able to send mail from another
machine or the subscriber's email address can appear in multiple formats. Mail
will be accepted from both the address-as-subscribed and from the new-address.
The new-address pattern may be an extended standard UNIX regular expression. See
example 2, which in many ways is the most useful for a list owner.
Example 1:
For a list named "bamidbar"
whose owner password is "manna" the user moshe@sinai.com has informed the list
owner that he sometimes need to send to the list from another machine as
moshe@nebo.net but doesn't wish to subscribe from that machine also. The list
owner complied by creating an alias for the second account:
- alias bamidbar manna
moshe@nebo.net moshe@sinai.com
so that all mail from
moshe@nebo.net is seen by ListProc as being from moshe@sinai.net.
Example 2: Using Regular
Expressions
A bamidbar list subscriber
has complained that she has an account on a system called hadin.edu which has
several machines linked together. Mail can be addressed to her as
Chava@hadin.edu. However, when she logs on to her account on hadin.edu she may
be randomly logged into one of three machines and can be any of 3 email address.
The machines are repentance, prayer, and charity. So when she sends mail her
message header could say that the mail is from chava@repentance.hadin.edu,
chava@prayer.hadin.edu or chava@charity.hadin.edu.
Another more common
illustration is that she receives mail as chava@hadin.edu, but when she tries to
submit to the list she receives a rejection telling her that
chava@mail.hadin.edu is not a subscriber.
Either situation is
bothersome, so she asks the list owner to help. The list owner responds by
sending the following command to ListProc
- alias bamidbar manna
(.+)@.*\.hadin.edu \1@hadin.edu
The address being given to
the ListProc are regular UNIX expressions. The end result of the above command
is that whenever ANY mail comes in from ANY user whose address ends in
"hadin.edu" the person's username is attached to the string "@hadin.edu" and the
first portion, whether mail, repentance, prayer or charity is stripped off.
Here is another example
using the same capability
- alias joshua nun
(.+)@.*\.judges.net \1@judges.net
