Managing Mailing Lists

Would you like to set up an electronic discussion forum for your customers? Or how about a mailing list to announce meetings of your local hobby group? Email is the universal Internet application, which makes mailing lists an ideal vehicle for creating electronic communities. All you need to run a mailing list is access to a system that is connected to the Internet, a mailing list management software package, and a bit of know-how, which is where this book comes in.
Managing Mailing Lists is full of practical information for the list maintainer and system administrator alike.

This book covers four mailing list packages: Majordomo, LISTSERV, Listproc, and SmartList. All of these packages run on UNIX systems; LISTSERV runs on a number of platforms, including Windows NT. If you are a system administrator, Managing Mailing Lists tells you what you need to know to pick a mailing list package and get it up and running on your system. It also offers advice on working with the people who are actually maintaining mailing lists on your system, so that you can give them the support they need to run effective, useful lists.

If you are charged with establishing and running a mailing list,
Managing Mailing Lists covers everything you need to know about setting up and maintaining the list, from writing the charter for the list to dealing with bounced messages. Depending on what mailing list software is running on your system, you'll need to work with your system administrator to set up various aspects of the list. This book lays out all the decisions you need to make and tells you what information you need to pass along to the administrator.

Mailing lists offer a great deal of flexibility. For example, you can create a moderated mailing list, so that you can control the content on the list, or you can let anyone post whatever they want, for a more free-form discussion group. You can also exert control over who can subscribe to the list, if you want to limit membership based on certain criteria. You can give your subscribers the option to receive individual messages or message digests and you can archive list postings and make them available to your readership.

您是否想為您的客戶建立一個電子討論區？或者為您當地的興趣小組宣布會議的郵件列表？電子郵件是一個普遍的互聯網應用程序，這使得郵件列表成為創建電子社區的理想工具。運行郵件列表所需的只是連接到互聯網的系統、郵件列表管理軟件包和一些專業知識，而這正是本書的用途。

《郵件列表管理》為列表維護者和系統管理員提供了實用的信息。

本書涵蓋了四個郵件列表軟件包：Majordomo、LISTSERV、Listproc和SmartList。所有這些軟件包都運行在UNIX系統上；LISTSERV運行在多個平台上，包括Windows NT。如果您是系統管理員，《郵件列表管理》將告訴您如何選擇一個郵件列表軟件包並在您的系統上運行它。它還提供了與實際維護郵件列表的人合作的建議，以便您能夠為他們提供運行有效、有用的列表所需的支持。

如果您負責建立和運行郵件列表，《郵件列表管理》涵蓋了您需要了解的有關設置和維護列表的所有內容，從為列表撰寫章程到處理退信。根據您系統上運行的郵件列表軟件，您需要與系統管理員合作設置列表的各個方面。本書列出了您需要做出的所有決策，並告訴您需要向管理員傳遞哪些信息。

郵件列表提供了很大的靈活性。例如，您可以創建一個審核制度的郵件列表，以便您可以控制列表上的內容，或者您可以讓任何人發布他們想要的內容，形成一個更自由的討論組。您還可以控制誰可以訂閱列表，如果您想根據某些標準限制成員資格。您可以給訂閱者提供接收單獨消息或消息摘要的選項，並且可以將列表發布存檔並提供給讀者。