List Creation Standards

Owned by Ashley Mattingly
Last updated: May 01, 2023 by Megan Clark
3 min read

Listserv is the original and industry-standard email list management software. Continuously developed to meet the latest demands, Listserv provides everything you need to manage all of your opt-in email lists, including email newsletters, announcements, discussion groups, and email communities. A user can send a single email to a list (e.g., UCForum-l@listserv.uconn.edu), and Listserv will copy that email and send it to everyone subscribed to that particular list.

List Creation Standards

  • All lists must have either a faculty member/a full-time staff member listed as the primary owner. The primary owner must be affiliated with the University of Connecticut or with an institution affiliated with the State of Connecticut.

  • Requests for new lists are reviewed before creation. They should pertain to one of the following broad categories related to the functioning of the University of Connecticut or its affiliates:

    • Research

    • Instruction Administrative

    • Business

  • Lists for academic associations will be accepted but must be sponsored by a member of the UConn faculty or staff or an affiliated institution.

  • Departmental or class lists will be accepted.

Requesting a New List

A request form can be obtained here. Please allow up to 15 minutes for a new list to be defined. The owners will be notified via e-mail when the list is defined.

The following settings and standards should be followed while filling out the list creation form.

List Owners

List owners are administrators of the list. They can perform all actions on the list they own, such as adding/removing subscribers, modifying the configuration, etc.

List Name

  • Discussion lists should end with -L (e.g., TEST-L).

  • Departmental lists should end with -DL (e.g., TEST-DL).

  • Departmental graduate student lists should end with -GL (e.g., TEST-GL).

  • The maximum length for the list name is 32 characters.

When selecting a name for your list, be as descriptive, yet concise, as possible; these names will be easier to remember. Include a “_” character between words in your list name (e.g., TEST_DEPARTMENT-L). Avoid using dates or seasons as part of the name.

Service Area

This value defines the target audience for the list. For the default, include the uconn.edu domain only. If you intend to include users with email addresses outside of the uconn.edu domain, select the second option, as well. 

Service / Confidential

The default value is Service. This indicates that only those in the defined service area (i.e., potential subscribers) will see the list. If you want your list to be confidential and not be displayed, even if a user issues the LISTS command, select Yes. Choose No if you want your list to be visible to everyone, including those outside of the organization.

If the Service Area is *, you must still check Confidential = No to make the list available worldwide via the LISTS GLOBAL command.

With Service = * and Confidential = Service, the the list will be seen by anyone issuing a LISTS command directly to listserv@listserv.uconn.edu but not to someone issuing the LISTS GLOBAL command.

Subscriptions

  • Open, Confirm (default): anyone within the defined service area may subscribe to the list.

    • The Confirm parameter means that subscription requests outside the local domain (uconn.edu) must be confirmed before they are accepted.

  • By Owner: owners of the list can add/remove subscribers to the list.

  • Closed: nobody can manually add/remove users to the list.

Send

This defines who may post to the list.

  • Private (default): only current subscribers can post to the list.

  • Editor: all postings will be forwarded to the first editor defined for this list or to the list’s moderators, if defined. Postings can be approved by forwarding them back to the list.

  • Owner: only list owners can post to the list.

Reply-To

  • List (default): defines where replies to the list should go.

Notebooks

This parameter indicates if an archive should be saved for the list and its postings. Notebooks can be searched using Listserv search commands. 

  • If Yes is selected, the notebook will be saved monthly.

  • Notebooks are kept on the Listserv machine for up to 12 months.

Digests

Users who set their subscription to Digest will get one piece of mail containing all the posts to a list over the selected period of time (never, daily, weekly, or monthly). Possible values are No; Yes, Daily; Yes, Weekly; Yes, Monthly, and the default value is No.

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