Nanaimo, Duncan, & District

Labour Council

P.O. Box 822 Nanaimo, BC, V9R 5N2
Ph:(250)760-0547 labour@telus.net

The NDDLC Electronic Mailing List

What Is An E-Mailing List?

An electronic mailing list is similar to a traditional mailing list — a list of names and addresses — as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to its members or customers, but typically refers to four things: a list of e-mail addresses, the people ("subscribers") receiving mail at those addresses, the publications (e-mail messages) sent to those addresses, and a posting address, which is a single e-mail address that, when designated as the recipient of a message, will send a copy of that message to all of the subscribers.

How Electronic Mailing Lists Work

Electronic mailing lists are usually fully or partially automated through the use of special mailing list software and a posting address that is set up on a server capable of receiving e-mail. Incoming messages sent to the posting address are processed by the software, and are distributed to all e-mail addresses subscribed to the mailing list. Depending on the software, additional addresses may be set up for the purpose of sending commands. Many electronic mailing list servers have a special email address in which subscribers (or those that want to subscribe) can send commands to the server to perform such tasks as subscribing and unsubscribing, temporarily halting the sending of messages to them, or changing available preferences. Some list servers, including the NDDLC's, allows people to unsubscribe, change preferences, etc. via a website. The url for making changes is http://list.web.net/lists/listinfo/nddlc-list.

The NDDLC electronic mailing list can be set to forward messages to subscribers either individually as they are received by the list server or in digest form in which all messages received on a particular day by the list server are combined into one email that is sent once per day to subscribers. The NDDLC mailing list allows individual subscribers to decide how they prefer to receive messages from the list server (individual or digest). The address to which posts to the list are sent is Nddlc-list@list.web.net

Types of Mailing Lists

The NDDLC electronic mailing list is an announcement list, which is used primarily as a one-way conduit of information and can only be "posted to" by selected people. This may also be referred to by the term newsletter.

Some mailing lists are open to anyone who wants to join them, while others require an approval from the list owner before one can join. Joining a mailing list is called "subscribing" and leaving a list is called "unsubscribing". To be subscribed to the list send an email request to Bob Smits at labour@telus.net.

Netiquette

The term "Netiquette" originated prior to the emergence of the world wide web in 1989. Text-based email dominated internet traffic, and the limitations of insecure, text-only communications demanded the community have a common set of rules. The term "netiquette" has been in use since as early as 1988, as evidenced by early posts of the satirical Dear Emily Postnews column.

We ask you to avoid flamewars and to avoid typing in ALL CAPS, which is considered shouting or yelling. Please remember that one's posts are (or can easily be made) public. Although the subscribers are generally delegates to Labour Council, do not take the privacy of your posts for granted.

If you have message that you think should be seen by everyone on the list, please forward them to labour@telus.net.

Community Partners

This is a union website, designed and maintained by members of CEP Local 525G and based on an Open Source template by Mike East