Intro to Mailing Lists

I’m sure you’ve come across mailing lists before; a service to which you subscribe, and when someone posts to the list you get the email. TOG has a public mailing list, that strictly speaking operates as a discussion list. Anyone subscribed can post to the list, on-topic discussion is encouraged, and you will get more than just anouncements.

To join our mailing list simply go to http://lists.tog.ie/mailman/listinfo/tog, enter your email address, and press the “Subscribe” button. A confirmation email will be sent to the address you entered, to which you can either reply, or click the link included. You will then receive a Welcome email, with info like links for subscription info, passwords, etc. It’s a good idea to keep this email around.

Perhaps the only real choice you need to make is whether or not you would like to receive list mail in daily digest format.
Pro; seperate emails will be bundled together and sent as one mail, therefore you will have less emails in your inbox.
Con; seperate emails will be bundled together and sent as one mail, meaning you might not see the discussion until after it’s over, and you will have difficulty replying to individual emails (quite a bit copy-pasting is involved).

If you plan to lurk and only ever read, and don’t mind being a bit behind the times, then digest-mode might be for you. For everyone else we recommend selecting “No” when asked if you’d like to receive the daily digest. It will make your life a lot easier, promise.

There are other tricks and techniques to making surviving a mailing-list easier, but many come down to your actual mail-client itself. For instance, if offered, use labels, filters, folders, anything to sort the mail automatically without you having to do anything. That way you can leave the mail sitting in your inbox (or other folder) until you’re ready to deal with it.

And remember, the tog public mailing list is archived. To browse the archives go to http://lists.tog.ie/pipermail/tog/, and browse month-by-month, sorted by Thread, Subject, Author, or Date. If browsing isn’t for you and you’d like to search the archives, it’s time to employ some google-fu;

Go to www.google.ie and enter;
site:lists.tog.ie inurl:/pipermail/tog/ WHATYOUWANTTOSEARCHFORHERE
e.g. to search for “open social”, then do a google search for
site:lists.tog.ie inurl:/pipermail/tog/ open social

There you go, that should be enough to get you started! Just one other thing; don’t forget your manners, and try to follow good netiquette.

Welcome to the mailing list.

(And remember, you can always unsubscribe! Bottom of page here. A few simple clicks can take the pain away 🙂