No2ID Lists

General Information

No2ID run a variety of lists, for a variety of purposes: for more information on a list, see the obligatory Wikipedia page.

Unless indictated (usually with the word "announce" appended to the list-name), all of our lists are discussion (i.e., any list-member may post), with private archives, and where mail from non-members are rejected outright.

General List Rules

For the benefit of all members of the list, the following rules are imposed:

Subscribing and Unsubscribing

To subscribe to a list, you can do this via the web-interface, or via email. Details of unsubscribing are in each message: at the bottom, and in the headers.

Changing your list subscription

At the moment, there's not an easy way to change your subscribed email address.

There is, however, the annoyance of unsubscribing the old address, and resubscribing with the new address: if you mail the listmasters, this is what they have to do for you.

As time permits, we'll write a form/script that makes this a wee bit easier: if you'd like to write one for us (prefereably in Perl or Python) please do get in touch with listmaster-at-no2id-dot-net

Posting to the list(s)

Once you're a list-member, and set your mail-client to send plain-text mails (to the list if nothing else), just send an email as you ordinarily would: text in the body, a meaningful subject line, &c. Instead of sending it to a person, you send it to the list address, e.g., no2id.blahville@lists.no2id.net (the actual address will depend on the list, and is contained in the automatically generated mail you received when you subscribed to the list) — you can add the list address to your email address book if you find that easier, too (but please do keep your anti-virus software up-to date).

Sending your mail to other addresses, in addition to the list's, will trigger the list-software to automatically place the message on hold — where it will be reviewed by the list-admins as time permits (they do this in their spare time, along with most of the other tech-stuff for the campaign), unless it's been a busy week and the message queued has since been automatically removed from the queue.

Also, you'll find sending your message to the list using To: or Cc: should get through a lot more easily than if it's bcc'd.

I sent a mail to the list, but it was rejected

If you sent a mail to the list, and got a bounce back saying the message was rejected, it's probably a case that the list doesn't think you're email address is a member of the list.

The easiest way of checking is to find the last mail sent to you by the list, and looking for the 'envelope-to:' header (don't know how to? here's a link, or do an internet search using the words "email" "header" "display" and whatever program you use to read email with).

Once you've worked that out, make sure your From: header includes your subscribed email addresss.

Contacting the list-admins will probably include this advice, and if appropriate a comment along the lines of "you're sending from x@example.org. That's not subscribed to the list. In order to post you need to be a member of the list, and send from your subscribed address"

I use Gmail/Googlemail, but don't see my list posts

This is a "feature" (or, as we think of it, a bug) in Gmail, see their words of wisdom for more info.

Spam-trap Issues

Annoyingly, some list-messages may be marked as spam by aggressive spam-filters. You may find whitelisting *@lists.no2id.net does the job (our lists are set-up to reject mail from people who aren't list-members), or if you want more control over that, add to your email address-book: listname-bounces@lists.no2id.net and listname@lists.no2id.net where 'listname' is the name of the list, e.g., for the fictitious list 'example@lists.no2id.net', you'd use 'example-bounces@lists.no2id.net' and 'example@lists.no2id.net'

Auto-Responders, "Out of Office" autoreplies &c

Autoresponders that send to lists are a nuisance. Please refrain from using broken mail-clients that will send an auto-response. Either to the list, to the sender, or the list administrative addresses.

People who do not heed this request risk having their subscriptions to the lists (a) disabled, and (b) moderated: in their first instances. Persistent offenders may administratively be removed from the list, and banned from posting.

Jeffrey Goldberg's written some notes/advice on these matters.

Where are these lists, then?

Ah yes, you want the listing! http://lists.no2id.net/mailman/listinfo
Our older lists are currently hosted on http://www.no2id.net/mailman/listinfo
If you're looking for lists for the local-groups, http://www.no2id.net/localgroups may be a good starting point.

I need a human's help!

In each case, listname-owner@lists.no2id.net is the address to use, where listname is the list's name. Please note that we run several hundred lists, on a few machines, so it's crucial that you provide as much information as possible, particularly if you're contacting us over list (un-)subscriptions.