Team Report - Listowners Team

The Listowners team is the team that is responsible for the day-to-day management of all the mailing lists that IIGS owns collectively.

Currently there are 24 lists allocated to various activities, some are basically quiescent while others have constant traffic, with others somewhere in between. There is a team of about twelve listowners looking after the lists.

The lists all are run under the SmartList software out of RootsWeb, with the listowners having from a basic to a good working knowledge of the software and its ins and outs.

Most of our work is catching all the email bounces for errant email addresses or misbehaving ISPs. Mind you we also have to look after the errant emailer who cannot understand our instructions - generally subscribe or unsubscribe related - or some who make the occasional oops (and believe you me I still make them), who we endeavour to be gentle with. :-)

How do we operate?

Open forum lists - in the traditional listowner manner
Team lists - as liaison/technical from listowners and under direction with the team leaders of the team lists for list operations.

Our list (IIGS-LISTOWNERS), is used for us to:

• communicate problems (remove the screamers 'Take me off all your lists!'),
  
• swap duties (some of us do have to have time off),
  
• discuss problems and problem subscribers (and we have had a few),
  
• plan how to do things better for the members, et cetera.

One of our priorities at the moment is trying to develop a simple, clear policy on how to use these lists but maintain some semblance of order and control.

Where are we going?

No where special as most of work is of the immediate nature. However, each of us is helping the teams to make the most of their lists and maybe we can get across some simple instructions on how to operate in mailing lists. That would be the listowners ultimate Nirvana.

The list is currently closed to subscribers as we have, and do, discuss confidential matters and it was deemed it more appropriate that way, and thus it was sort of felt that it was not the place for just 'drop in' observers. This is not to say that we are discouraging members from joining our team, just hastening slowly.

Also I must finish with thanking one person who bears the brunt of the flak/traffic for us listowners, that person being Vicki who looks after both Announcements and INET-GENSOC. Thanks Vicki.

If you have any questions, feel welcome to get back to me and I will try to answer them. If you are interested in being a mad, lunatic listowner I am also interested to hear from you.

Regards Andrew

Andrew Billinghurst IIGS TeamLeader - Listowners
billinghurst@slim.agvic.gov.au