Lists (Mailing Lists)

Kenji Kitao and S. Kathleen Kitao

1. What are lists?

Nowadays there are many resources on computer networks. One kind of resource is lists. They may be called mailing lists, computer mailing lists, or computer discussion lists. A list has a central address (list address), which distributes messages ("posts") sent by any list member to all of the list members. Therefore if, for example, you want to express an opinion about a topic related to the topic of the list, you send it to the list address. Your post is distributed to everyone on the list, and anyone who wants to can respond to your opinion. If you want to ask a question, you can send your question to the list, and someone on the list who knows the answer might send you the information.

There are many lists.*1 Liszt list search web page lists more than 70,000 lists. Each list is related to a particular broad or narrow topic. However, there are mainly four categories, based on their purposes: academic topics, information, entertainment, and commercial purposes. There are many lists related to TESOL (http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/online/list/lis-tefl.htm), foreign languages (http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/online/list/lis-fore.htm), linguistics (http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/online/list/lis-ling.htm), and Useful lists for computer related education (http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/online/list/lis-comp.htm). There are even Student Lists studying English or Japanese (http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/online/list/lis-stud.htm). Surprisingly, almost all of them are free. They are really worth investigating.

Many of the lists are discussion groups, and you can ask questions, participate in discussions, express your opinions, or answer other people's questions. You will also receive useful information about conferences, publications, software, etc., or you can send out such information. In large, active lists, if you send a question, you will often get answers within a day.

There are some lists on which you can only receive information, as if you were subscribed to a journal or newsletter, except that the information comes to you by e-mail.*2 You receive academic articles or information. Information and commercial lists also send you information about new lists, world wide web sites, products, etc. You can read whatever you receive, but you do not have the opportunity to discuss it with other subscribers.

Each list has its own purpose, scope and membership. Large lists can have more than 10,000 subscribers, and small ones can have less than 100. Some lists have strict rules, and some are very informal and you find many personal messages. Some lists approve subscribers individually, but most of them automatically accept subscriptions, though some of them ask for confirmation or have a questionnaire about the subscriber. Some lists have passwords for special operations.

In order to post your message to a list, you have to subscribe to it. A very few lists require special authorization to post messages. Some lists are moderated, and contributions are screened before they are posted. Others are unmoderated, and all contributions are distributed to all subscribers automatically.

2. What can you do with lists?

On a list, you can get information on your field. You can read discussions by subscribers who have similar interests. You can ask questions, participate in discussions, and give information.

There are lists on which you can conduct surveys for your research or find keypals for your students.*3 You can subscribe to some lists in order to find a job.*4 In addition, there are lists for students of English, where they can have an opportunity to communicate with other students of English on subjects they are interested in.*5 There is a list on which students can conduct surveys for their projects.*6 There are lists which students can use to practice Japanese.*7 There is the list for postgraduate researchers in applied linguistics run by British Association for Applied Linguistics.*8

You can download previous postings from the archive of most lists. You will find out what kinds of discussions there were or what announcements were made in the past.

Some lists have many useful resources in the archives, and you can download them for your research or teaching. Of course you can post your documents to the archive for other researchers' use.*9

Using lists, you can obtain useful information, find partners for your research or teaching projects, help your students, and contribute to your profession.

3. What is important to know to use lists?

We strongly suggest that you participate in discussions, asking questions, answering questions, offering information you have, etc. If you are only reading whatever posted on the list, it will probably not be very useful for you.

One way to learn about lists is to subscribe to any which sound interesting. If the lists you subscribe to do not turn out to be interesting, you can post questions about other lists which might suit your interests better. Other list members may be able to give you information about which lists might be of interest to you.

4. What you need to know about technical matters

There are five major different computer programs for lists--listserv, listproc, majordomo, mailbase, and mailserv. Their operations are similar. The following are the commands you send to the most common one, which is listserv. The other four programs may have slightly different commands for some operations, but you will receive error messages and can resend the right ones. If you do not know what commands the program is using, you can send the message "help" (without quotation marks) to the computer address, and you will receive a list of commands.

It is very, very important that you always send these commands to the computer program address (which starts with "listserv," "majordomo," "listproc," etc.), not to the list, and the computer will either respond by doing what you want or send you message telling you that it cannot do what you want. You send your posts to the list address (which starts with the name of the list), and your posts will be distributed to all of the list members. If you want to make a complaint or suggestion about the administration of the list or if you want to ask a question, you send the message to the list owner (address listed in the welcome message).

For example:

computer program address

list address

list manager

The appendix has a lot of useful information about subscribing to lists. However, there is a lot of information there, and you will probably find it overwhelming if you try to understand it all at once. Do not try to memorize all the commands, but read them through, and you will understand what you can do with lists. Not all lists have all the capabilities, and you need to check them with "information" or "help" commands.

At minimum, you should know the following commands.

Subscribe listname your firstname lastname

(subscribing to the list)

unsubscribe listname

(leaving the list permanently)

set listname digest

(receiving one file a day, with all the posts from that day)

set listname nomail

(stopping mail temporarily)

set listname mail

(restarting mail)

index listname

(getting the index of the archive)

get filename filetype listname

(downloading files from the archive)

For other computer programs, you can see basic commands here (http://202.23.150.181:80/users/kkitao/online/list/lis-guis.htm#advance).

5. Conclusions

There are many lists available for TESOL, foreign language teaching, and linguistics. Using those lists effectively will help you with teaching and research. For people in teaching English to speakers of other languages, TESL-L is one of the most useful lists. For people who are interested in linguistics, LINGUIST is the most common list. We will explain them in detail, and you will learn about how to subscribe to an participate in a list, based on one of these lists. We also list useful lists in this web resource. We suggest that you go through those lists and subscribe to any list you think you might be interested in. All of them are FREE.

Notes

*1 You can search for lists on topics that interest you on the World Wide Web site, "Listz Directory of E-mail Discussion Groups" (http://www.liszt.com) and lists related to languages or linguistics at "Lists of Language Lists" (http://info.ox.ac.uk/departments/langcentre/langlists.html).

*2 TESLEJ-L (listserv@cmsa.berkley.edu) is an electronic journal on TESOL. Newlist (listserv@vm1.nodak.edu) offers information on new lists or websites.

*3 IECC (iecc-request@stolaf.edu) is a list for looking for penpals K-12, and IECC-HE (iecc-he-request@stolaf.edu) is for looking for penpals for university students. IECC-PROJECT (iecc-project-request@stolaf.edu) is for conducting projects, and you can conduct surveys for your teaching or research.

*4 TESL-L has a branch list for people interested in looking for English teaching jobs. To subscribe to it, send the following message to listserv@cunyvm.cuny.edu. Do not write anything in the subject line.

set tesl-l nomail

set tesljb-l digest

*5 There are student lists for people learning English. They are established in February 1994 to provide a forum for cross-cultural discussion and writing practice for college and university students in English language programs around the world. There are 10 student lists: majordomo@latrobe.edu.au

INTRO-SL : Discussion List for New Members
CHAT-SL : General Discussion List (Low level)
DISCUSS-SL : General Discussion List (High level)
BUSINESS-SL : Discussion List on Business and Economics
ENGL-SL : Discussion List on Learning English
EVENT-SL : Discussion List on Current Events
MOVIE-SL : Discussion List on the Cinema
MUSIC-SL : Discussion List on Music
SCITECH-SL : Discussion List on Science, Technology & Computers
SPORT-SL : Discussion List on Sports

*6 IECC-SURVEYS (iecc-surveys-request@stolaf.edu) gives students opportunities to conduct surveys for their class projects.

*7 There are several lists for this purpose.

The Gakusei Lists --> JAPANESE LANGUAGE STUDENT E-MAIL DISCUSSION LIST listproc@hawaii.edu

Gakusei-L first to second year, beginners
Gakuseik-l using kana and kanji
Gakusei2-L second to third year, mid to high intermediate
Gakusei2k-l using kana and kanji
Gakusei3-L fourth year and beyond, advanced speakers
Bunpou-L asking questions about grammar
Sensei-L for the teachers who use the aboove lists for instruction

*8 BAALPG (the BAAL e-mail list for postgraduate researchers)

mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk

Send the following message to subscribe:

join baalpg your firstname lastname *9 TESL-L (listserv@cunyvm.cuny.edu) and LINGUIST (listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu) in particular have archives which have many useful resources.

Appendix

ListProcessor 6.0 Here is a brief description of the set of requests recognized by ListProcessor. Everything appearing in [] below is optional; everything appearing in <> is mandatory; all arguments are case insensitive. The vertical bar ("|") is used as a logical OR operator between the arguments. Requests may be abbreviated, but you must specify at least the first three characters.

Keep in mind that when referring to a list, that list may be of two kinds: local or remote, unless otherwise noted. When referring to a local list, your request will be immediately processed; when referring to a remote list (a list served by another ListProcessor which this system knows about), your request will be appropriately forwarded. Issue a 'lists' request to get a listing of all local and known remote lists to this ListProcessor.

Recognized requests are:

help [topic]

Without arguments, this file. Otherwise get specific information on the selected topic. Topics may also refer to requests. To learn more about this system issue a 'help listproc' request. To get a listing of all available topics, generate an error message by sending a bogus request like 'help me'.

set [

Without the optional arguments, get a list of all current settings for the specified list. Otherwise change the option to a new value for that list. Issue a 'help set' request for more information.

The only way to subscribe to a list.

unsubscribe
signoff

Two ways of removing yourself from the specified list.

recipients
review

Get a listing of all non-concealed people subscribed to the specified list.

information

Get information about the specified list.

statistics {[subscriber email address(es)] | [-all]}

Get a listing of non-concealed subscribers along with the number of messages each one of them has sent to the specified list. If the optional email addresses are given, then statistics will be collected for these users only. For example:

stat foo user1@domain user2@domainwill generate statistics about these two subscribers. "-all" lists statistics for all users that have posted on the list (whether currently subscribed or not).

run [ ]

Run the specified command with the optional arguments and receive the output from stdout and/or stderr. To get a listing of all available commands to run, omit the arguments, i.e. issue a 'run ' request. You have to belong to the specified list, and must have obtained the password from the list's owner; the owner's address may be found in the Errors-To: header line of each delivered message. may be local only.

lists

Get a list of all local mailing lists that are served by this server, as well as of all known remote lists.

index [archive | path-to-archive] [/password] [-all]

Get a list of files in the selected archive, or the master archive if no archive was specified. If an archive is private, you have to provide its password as well.

get [/password] [parts]

Get the requested file from the specified archive. Files are usually split in parts locally, and in such a case you will receive the file in multiple email messages -- an 'index' request tells you how many parts the file has been split into, and their sizes; if you need to obtain certain parts, specify them as optional arguments. If an archive is private, you have to provide its password as well.

view ] [/password] [parts]

Same as "get" but in interactive mode just catenates the file on the screen.

search ] [/password] [-all]

Search all files of the specified archive (and all of its subarchives if -all is specified) for lines that match the pattern. The pattern can be an egrep(1)-style regular expression with support for the following additional operators: '~' (negation), '|' and '&' (logical OR and AND), '<' '>' (group regular expressions). The pattern may be enclosed in single or double quotes. Note: . matches any character including new line.

fax [/password] [parts]

Same as 'get', but it faxes you the files instead to the specified number.

release

Get information about the current release of this ListProcessor system.

which

Get a listing of local mailing lists to which you have subscribed.

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The requests below are list owner specific. List owners should contact the system's manager for extensive usage information:

reports

Obtain all reports about the specified local list.

edit

Obtain the specified file for editing.

put [args]

Manipulate addresses and change system files.

approve

Approve the message identified by the tag number for posting to the specified moderated list.

discard

Discard the message identified by the tag number sent to the specified moderated list.

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In addition, help is available on the following topic(s):

live

Learn how to connect to this ListProcessor over the Internet for live processing of your requests.

listproc

Learn more about this system and list management software in general.

If you find any problems, let me know.

kkitao@doshisha.ac.jp