CommunityData:Email
There are two kinds email addresses that CDSC uses:
- Email lists are full-fledged email lists that are being run using Mailman 3 software. Lists have members, include the ability to moderate message, have a nice web-based interface for viewing and searching for old messages. There is a lot of flexibility in terms of lists in terms of how you can configure them. Lists can be publicly visible (or not) , publicly joinable (or not), announce only (or a free for all), or whatever.
- Aliases are basically just forwarding addresses. An email alias will just rely email sent to it to one or more other addresses. They cannot be configured in any way beyond this.
Email Lists
You can find a list of our mailing lists on this webpage. There are a number of number of email lists for communication CDSC members listed on that page but these are the key ones:
- collective-uw@communitydata.science — Current CDSC research faculty, students, staff at UW.
- collective-nu@communitydata.science — Current CDSC research faculty, students, staff at Northwestern.
- byor@communitydata.science — Bring Your Own Research (NU)
- hyak-cdsc@communitydata.science — users of the CDSC hyak allocation
- anonymity-team@communitydata.science — participants for the The Anonymity Project (NSF funded project with Drexel and NYU)
- learning@communitydata.science — discussion and coordination of research on informal learning in online communities
Email aliases
There are also a number of email aliases. Most of these are just for individual members for some are important. These are the key ones:
- collective-unc@communitydata.science — Current CDSC research faculty, staff, students at UNC
- collective@communitydata.science — Members of all the pother previous "collective" lists.
- dyr@communitydata.science
Subscribing to a list
To join any of the lists or view their addresses, go here (you may need/want to create an account when you submit a subscription request if you want to manage any of the settings):
Adding/Updating Email Aliases
Members of lists should be able to request a password and remove themselves from an email list on their own. They do by navigating to the appropriate page on our mailing list server.
For help being added or removed from a list, contact either:
- Nate TeGrotenhuis <nathante@uw.edu>
- Jeremy Foote <jdfoote@u.northwestern.edu>
- Benjamin Mako Hill <makohill@uw.edu>
- Aaron Shaw <aaronshaw@northwestern.edu>
These people all have a super-user password and are administrators on all lists. If you want to be one of those people to spread out the work/responsibility (♥!) contact one of the people above.
"My email to collective@ is being held"
To address issues of spam, our email lists will not relay email except from list members and an additional group of people who have been whitelisted on a list-by-list basis. That means that when you send email the collective email address, it will send it to multiple to lists and will, by default, be held for moderation by any list that you are not on. This can be a little confusing.
For example, if you are at UW and email the whole group for the first time, your email will go out to the collective-uw list but you will get a moderation email from the list saying that your list has not to the folks on the collective-nu folks. In general, you don't need to worry or do anything. The administrators of the list will get a notification and will check and approve your email. After you send mail once or twice, the admin will add you to the whitelist so that your email goes through automatically in the future. If it's very urgent. You can click through the page on the list, find the administrators for the list that is holding your message, and ping them.
Technical Notes
Adding Lists
To make a new list, you first need root on nada.com.washington.edu. Run the following command:
$ sudo -u list mailman create --notify --owner <OWNER_EMAIL1> --owner <OWNER EMAIL2> <FULL LIST EMAIL ADDRESS>
Second, visit the web interface Mailman web interface. Log in with an administrator account and/or ask one of the current admins (e.g., Mako or Aaron) to make you an administrator for the mailing list you just created.
Updating/Configuring Lists
Most changes can simply be made on our mailing list website.
Adding/Updating Aliases
The alias file lives on nada, at /etc/postfix/virtual. You will need root access to edit it. After editing, run
$ sudo postmap /etc/postfix/virtual
to make it active.
