UH Groupings and LISTSERV Settings

Owned by Julio Polo
Last updated: Oct 15, 2021 by mhodges
2 min read

If you choose LISTSERV as a publication destination for your grouping, you can specify various LISTSERV settings with your request.  Here is what you need to know:

LISTSERV settings you can choose

  1. Should your list be moderated?
    1. Moderated (default setting)
      Making a list moderated will allow you to screen messages sent to your list before they are distributed to your subscribers. All grouping owners are editors and moderators, meaning they send to the list and approve postings.
    2. Unmoderated
  2. Who can send to the list?
    1. Owners and Members (default setting)
    2. Owners
    3. Anyone
    4. Anyone with Non-Member Confirmation
      Non-member confirmation helps reduce the amount of spam to your list by requiring a confirmation from non-members before their messages are distributed to your list.

  3. What address should the 'Reply-To:' email header contain?

    1. List (the default setting; but it will also respect any Reply-To already specified in the email)

    2. Sender of Email Message

    3. None

  4. Should email attachments be allowed on your list?

    1. Yes (default setting)

    2. No

  5. Should the list be archived?

    1. No (default setting)

    2. Yes
      All messages sent to the list will be archived into files organized by month. To catch-up on discussions they missed, archives may be retrieved by the people you specify in the next step

  6. Who should be able to access your list archives?

    1. Owners and Members (the default setting)

    2. Owners

    3. Anyone

LISTSERV settings that you should not change

UH Groupings needs to control certain aspects of a LISTSERV list in order to ensure it synchronizes with its grouping:

  1. Subscription requests via LISTSERV commands are rejected.  Membership changes are done to the grouping, which then synchronize the LISTSERV list.
  2. Members can remove themselves from the list using LISTSERV commands or https://listserv.hawaii.edu, thus creating a membership discrepancy with the grouping.
    1. You will be notified if someone does this.  You can then decide whether to:
      1. Convince the person to stay and put the person back into the LISTSERV list
      2. Accept the person's departure and use https://hawaii.edu/uhgroupings to exclude the person from the grouping.
  3. LISTSERV commands to reconfigure the list are not available for groupings.  Please contact its-iam-help@lists.hawaii.edu if you need to reconfigure your list.
  4. LISTSERV errors associated with a grouping go to the UH Groupings administrators, who will then forward relevant errors to the grouping's owners.

Other LISTSERV settings

  1. No welcome email message is sent to a newly added member.  There are options to enable a generic or custom welcome message.  You shouldn't enable this if you have a very large grouping (e.g. a list for all students at a particular campus)
  2. No email message is sent when a member is deleted from the list.
  3. There is an option to send a short message acknowledging that a list received an email message posted by a list member.  This is off by default.

  4. LISTSERV maintains a global directory of all public lists. If your list is set to 'Published Globally', it will be published globally in CataList, the official catalog of public LISTSERV lists. If set to 'Visible Locally', your list will be hidden globally, but will be visible within the UH system. If set to 'Hidden' (the default setting), your list will not be added to the global directory and will not be visible within the UH system. This has no effect on access to list archives.