Wharton Computing Student Support

Mailing Lists

For List Users

• Creating a Mailing List
• Using Mailing Lists

For List Owners

• Most of the information you need to manage a list is at: Managing a Mailing List
• You can perform the following tasks using the Managing Mailing Lists tool in the My Account section of SPIKE:
• Edit your list's membership
• Make the list moderated or unmoderated
• Make the list open or closed
• Stipulate that only members of the list can find out the list's membership
• Change the maximum message length
• Change the expiration date
• Change the list's category
• Change the list's description

For other tasks, please see the following:

• To change ownership of a mailing list
• To look at the Welcome Message for your mailing list
• To change the Welcome Message for your mailing list
• To find out your list's password, please contact Consulting
• To cancel a list, please contact Consulting.

If you're getting error messages:

• The following address had permanent fatal errors
• Bounce listname: message too long

Creating a Mailing List

• Click the My Account tab on SPIKE.
• Select Create a new mailing list.
• Follow the instructions to create a list.
• You'll receive an e-mail with the final results of your request and additional information about how to administer your mailing list.

Changing Ownership of a Mailing List

To change the owner of mailing list, the current owner needs to contact Consulting and provide the name of the list and the Wharton username of the new owner. Note that only current Wharton students can own mailing lists.

Looking at the Welcome Message for the List

To see the welcoming message for the list, subscribe yourself to the list. After you receive the welcoming message, unsubscribe from the list to prevent getting duplicate messages.

Changing the Welcome Message for the List

To create your own message, send the following request to majordomo@wharton.upenn.edu:

newinfo listname password (substituting your listname and password)

Beginning with the next line, enter the text you would like new users to receive. This information will then be added at the beginning of the standard welcome message for all new users.

Error Messages

As a list owner, you may occasionally receive the following message from majordomo:

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----<JoeWharton@host.wharton.upenn.edu>

----- Transcript of session follows -----
procmail: Quota exceeded while writing "/home/class/JoeWharton/Mail/.mail"
<JoeWharton@host.wharton.upenn.edu> 550 ... Can't create output: Error 0

This means that one of the users on your list was over quota (using too much disk space on the server) and did not receive the message. Several other e-mail addresses may be listed in the error message, but the only user who did not receive the message appears in the error text as above. Here, Joe Wharton was over quota and did not get the message.

You may sometimes receive an e-mail from majordomo with the subject line:

BOUNCE listname: Message too long (>200000)

This means that someone sent a message to the list that was larger that the allowable size, which by default is 200kb. This would include all text, any imbedded images and file attachments. You can increase the default attachment size by using the Managing Mailing Lists tool in the My Account section of SPIKE.