Help:Email list management

DFM mailing list

The DFM mailing list is appropriate for communications with the wider team, including advisors and collaborators who are peripherally involved in project activities. Recipients can reply to messages through email, and messages sent by members can be sent out to everyone on the list, without all members’ email addresses being visible to everyone else.

All project investigators and collaborators are currently included in the mailing list. You can manually add or remove members at http://lists.umanitoba.ca/mailman/admin/dried-fish-matters/members. When updating email addresses in Outlook or other places, it is desirable to update them here as well.

• Moderator Password: ********

As the mailing list is moderated, you will receive an email notification at Dried.Fish.Matters@umanitoba.ca every time someone has posted a message to the list, which you will then need to approve by following the link provided. This mechanism guards against the accidental sending of unwanted messages. Any messages received from the DFM account will be sent out directly without moderation.

The mailing list archive (sent messages) can be viewed online at http://lists.umanitoba.ca/mailman/private/dried-fish-matters/ (requires sign-in).

The administrative interface is available at http://lists.umanitoba.ca/mailman/admin/dried-fish-matters. The mailing list settings should not require modification, though if if it becomes necessary to do so, follow the instructions for list managers on the software website, GNU Mailman. The list itself is hosted by the University of Manitoba via IST.

Other mailing lists

We also have the capacity to implement other mailing lists, using the same software, from our web server in the format <listname>@driedfishmatters.org. These lists can be created and managed by searching for the "Mailing Lists" menu item in cPanel.

We have one mailing list currently set up: smallfishseminar@driedfishmatters.org. This was used to communicate with participants in the FAO Small Fish Seminar in 2021.

Sending mass communications from Outlook is generally not advisable as there is a high likelihood of messages being intercepted as spam by the receiving servers. Bulk messages must be sent out with email headers identifying them as coming from a mailing list, and they must include a mechanism for unsubscribing from future communications. The mailing list software handles both of these features.

Mail merge

An alternative to mailing lists is sending out individualized messages using the "mail merge" function in Outlook, where a message template is created in Word then sent out individually to all the recipients in a spreadsheet, optionally filling in template fields matching data for each participant from the spreadsheet (e.g., first and last name, salutation, their affiliation, etc.). We have used this mechanism for communicating with smaller groups, such as the candidates for scholarships at AIT, or the presenters at conferences.

The primary drawback of mail merge is that it is a one-way communication: you can only send each message to a single recipient, rather than to a group of recipients, unless you have email group aliases available. This means that you can't send a message to a larger group and have everyone see the others' replies.

Alternatives

In principle, online forum channels resolve many of the communications challenges with email:

• discussion on each topic is grouped in a single location, alongside any attachments -- this avoids the problem of finding individual topics in a stream of email communications
• response threads are organized more efficiently than in many email clients, making them easier to read
• individuals can enter or leave discussions at any time (i.e., people who were not copied on the original messages can still see the entire conversation)
• conversations can be shared and summarized using web-accessible links

Products such as Slack and Microsoft Teams work well for these types of communications, but are designed for interactions among team members within a single institution.

We have a discussion facility on the DFM Wiki, accessible using the "Discussion" tab at the top of any content page, which provides threaded forum-style discussions. There is an email notification facility for new posts. This works well, however not everyone in the DFM project is receptive to using it. In fact, some people in the project are surprisingly reluctant to adopt new communication tools and technologies; today, in 2022, some of our co-investigators are still sending us MS-WORD documents in the old format deprecated in 2007.

See the proposals listed under Stage two planning#Routine communications.