Owning a List in Three Easy Steps

By Web

LISTSERV's web interface can be found at http://lists.usm.maine.edu.

Before you can do anything on the site, you'll need to get a Listserv password for yourself. You'll see that option under Get Password. Enter your email address, then pick a hard-to-guess password and enter it twice. Click on Register Password. A confirmation will be emailed to you with further instructions. If you ever forget your Listserv password, you can simply go through this process again.

Once you have a password, managing your list really boils down to three things:

1. Find out who's on the list
   
   1. Choose List Management/ Subscriber Management.
   2. If there is a dropdown list, choose the list you want to examine.
   3. Choose the Single Subscriber tab.
   4. Choose In Browser from the bottom of the page.
   5. If necessary, use the Find function of your browser (usually Ctrl+F) to find a specific address.
2. Add people to the list
   
   1. Choose List Management/ Subscriber Management.
   2. If there is a dropdown list, choose the list you want to examine.
   3. Choose the Single Subscriber tab.
   4. Under Add New Subscriber/ E-mail Address and Name, type the user's email address and their full name. There should be one space between the address and the name. Examples are listed on the page.
3. Remove people from the list
   
   1. Choose List Management/ Subscriber Management.
   2. If there is a dropdown list, choose the list you want to examine.
   3. Choose the Single Subscriber tab.
   4. Under Examine or Delete Subscription/ Name or Address, type in the email address (or portion thereof) and click Search in <list>.
   5. If multiple matches are found, select the one you want to delete.
      
      1. Pick the appropriate radio button depending on whether or not you want to notify the user that they've been deleted.
      2. Click Delete.
   6. If only one match is found, you will see that person's subscription settings.
      
      1. Pick the appropriate radio button depending on whether or not you want to notify the user that they've been deleted.
      2. Click Delete.

By Email

You can also manage your list entirely by sending commands to listserv@lists.usm.maine.edu. When you send email commands to Listserv, confirmation is generally required. This is to protect against someone spoofing your email address. After issuing a command, you will receive an email that contains a "cookie." The cookie is a URL that you will need to click on to confirm/complete your command.

There are three basic tasks involved in managing a list:

1. Find out who's on the list.
   
   1. Compose a new email to listserv@lists.usm.maine.edu.
   2. Subject: (does not matter)
   3. Body: REVIEW listname (for example, REVIEW usm-l)
   4. Click send.
2. Add people to the list.
   
   1. Compose a new email to listserv@lists.usm.maine.edu.
   2. Subject: (does not matter)
   3. Body: ADD listname email fullname (for example, ADD usm-l fdoe@usm.maine.edu Fred Doe)
   4. Click send.
3. Remove people from the list.
   
   1. Compose a new email to listserv@lists.usm.maine.edu.
   2. Subject: (does not matter)
   3. Body: DELETE listname email (for example, DEL usm-l fdoe@usm.maine.edu)
      
      1. (Optional) precede the DELETE command with the word QUIET to avoid sending the user any notification. This is useful when deleting a bad address from the list. (For example, QUIET DELETE usm-l fdoe@usm.me.edu .)
   4. Click send.

You can combine any number of REVIEW, ADD and DELETE commands in the body of a single email. You might do this, for instance, to QUIET DELETE a bad address and ADD the corrected address in one step.