ACM SIGCHI Guide to L-Soft LISTSERV List Owners

Table of Contents

General Information for All Listowners
ACM Information Director's Resource Kit
Setting Up a New List
Day-to-Day List Ownership
Overview of SIGCHI Listserv, Policies, and Documentation

General Information for All Listowners

All SIGCHI listowners should be familiar with the material in this section.

Important LISTSERV conventions

All listserv management is done by sending requests to the LISTSERV: listserv@acm.org never to a list.
Requests must appear in the body of a message, not in the Subject: line, which is ignored by the LISTSERV.
Most LISTSERV requests specify a list, but some general requests do not.
LISTSERV is case-insensitive, and often allows abbreviations. Examples in the text will use upper case. Examples set apart will use a typewriter font.
LISTSERV identifies a user or owner by the email account from which they make requests; users never provide their email address to the LISTSERV, which uses the mail header to determine the email address. List owners can be additionally identified by an owner's password, and lists can be accessed using the list's password.

Key people to contact

All requests for list setup and changes should be made to: support@acm.org. The more information you can supply to ACM, the better. For example, to create a list, you can send ACM an edited list header with all the options you want already set.

Include the SIGCHI Information Director infodir_sigchi@acm.org on the recipients for initial requests, such as list creation, if only so that ACM knows that you are making an official request. (Of course, if you have not been authorized to make a request, the SIGCHI InfoDir is likely to complain.)

If a request has not been fulfilled within 2-3 business days, enlist the help of the SIGCHI Information Director, who will try to expedite the request.

List Types and Policies

SIGCHI has defined several types of mailing list and associated policies.

ACM Information Director's Resource Kit

ACM has created a Information Director's Resource Kit

Setting Up a New List

Setting up a new list without planning and discussion can result in a lot of extra work after the list has been created, and even a list that people don't want to use. You should always consult creating of new lists with the SIGCHI Information Director.

Day-to-Day List Ownership

After you have set up your list, there are some tasks you will be expected to manage and some services you can provide to your list.

Managing the List

Overview of SIGCHI Listserv, Policies, and Documentation

The ACM LISTSERV software from L-Soft provides many features to foster email communication among many users. The basic idea of a listserv is that a listserv list has a set of subscribers and optional information files, and people send mail to the list and access files, all more or less automatically managed by the listserv. The List Owner's Manual for LISTSERV is over 100 pages, which makes it a daunting challenge to prospective list owners. The L-Soft documentation is available in a variety of formats, and this guide contains some links to the HTML version.

This document is designed to provide a few variations on a typical procedure for creating SIGCHI discussion lists, noting policy decisions along the way. During about a six-month period of 1996, the SIGCHI Executive Committee (EC) discussed and decided many policies and conventions for lists, and these are presented in the context of the procedures. When I say SIGCHI or "we", I mean the SIGCHI EC.

List Owner's Quick Start
List User's Guide
L-Soft Owner's Documentation (many different formats, including those below)
HTML Manual
- Chapters 1-11 (255 K)
- Chapters 1-11 (split into parts at ACM)
- Appendix A: System Reference Library (arranged by topic)
- Appendix B: Alphabetical Reference
PDF Manual (750K Prints nicely)
Plain Text Manual (325K)

Original author: Gary Perlman, SIGCHI Email Manager, revisions by Hans de Graaff.