Choosing a name and title - Guide to L-Soft LISTSERV List Owners

Choosing a Name and Title for Your List

Choosing a Name for Your List
Choosing a Descriptive Title for Your List
Adding an HTML Description to Lists

Choosing a Name for Your List

There are LISTSERV sites all over the world, and they exchange information about their lists, so it is important to choose a name and short description that is understandable to outsiders. The convention for SIGCHI lists is to start the name with CHI- so that all SIGCHI lists appear together when requesting a list of lists:

	LISTS

The standard delimiter for SIGCHI lists is "-", and it should be used between words. The "." delimiter used in the *.chi@xerox.com era is not available for the LISTSERV on ACM. Because most people can make aliases for addresses, or have address books, or mail by selecting mailto: links in a Web browser, long names are recommended. Restrict your list names to 32 characters; longer names cause assorted software problems. The following table shows some Xerox and ACM names for comparison.

Description	Xerox.com Name	ACM.org Name
HCI Educators	`educators.chi`	`CHI-Educators`
Local SIGCHI Chapters	`Local-SIGs.chi`	`CHI-Local-SIGs`
Social Issues	`SocialAction.chi`	`CHI-Social-Action`

(note the added - in the CHI-Social-Action name).

Choosing a Descriptive Title for Your List

When users ask the LISTSERV for a list of lists:

	LISTS

they receive mail with a list of listnames and short descriptions of each list. A result like:

	CHI-EDUCATORS      CHI-EDUCATORS
	CHI-VISION         CHI-VISION
	CHI-EEC            CHI-EEC

is not too useful to potential subscribers, while:

	CHI-EDUCATORS      ACM SIGCHI Educators (Open Discussion)
	CHI-VISION         ACM SIGCHI Future Directions of SIGCHI (Open Discussion)
	CHI-EEC            ACM SIGCHI Extended Executive Committee (Mailing List)
	CHI-BUCKCHI        ACM SIGCHI Central Ohio Local Chapter Information (Mail Alias)

could be understood by a much wider audience. L-Soft keeps lists of lists at many sites, including ACM.org so it is recommended that the list description include:

ACM
SIGCHI
a topic
an indication if the type of list
- open discussion list
- mailing list
- committee
- mail alias for a group (e.g., a local SIG)

With a unique string like "ACM SIGCHI" in every list, you can point people to the L-Soft Search Results with all the SIGCHI Lists.

Adding an HTML Description to Lists

You can add HTML descriptions of your list in the list header. See an example header by reviewing a list such as chi-announcements. Your HTML description might include:

links to ACM and SIGCHI
a description of the list (i.e., it's charter)
a link to the list owner
a link to a webpage related to the list
a link to a list archive