Book details of 'Managing Mailing Lists'

Title	Managing Mailing Lists
Author(s)	Alan Schwartz, Paula Ferguson
ISBN	156592259X
Language	English
Published	March 1998
Publisher	O'Reilly & Associates

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Reviewer amazon.com wrote:
Although mailing lists are hardly one of the more glamorous aspects of Internet communications, they remain one of the most useful, effective, and popular methods for group discussions. Many organizations and businesses use them to keep in touch with members and customers. But while mailing lists are simple to use, they can be confusing for newcomers to run. This comprehensive guide is for anyone who wants to run or manage a mailing list, including the busy system administrator who needs to ensure that user-owned mailing lists run as trouble-free as possible. Schwartz concentrates on Unix systems and software because they are well proven, stable, and free (plus, most mailing lists are based in Unix systems). Discussions of Unix systems and commands can be dry, but Schwartz is thoughtful enough to interject some humorous examples. He covers the technicalities of list operation, including the selection and use of all the leading software. He also goes into the pros and cons of the various strategic questions that list managers must face, such as whether or not a list should be moderated or whether or not to allow nonsubscribers to post to a list. This book will save any new list manager a great deal of time and trouble.
Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
This book addresses both aspects of mailing list management: the care and feeding of the list itself, and administration of the software. However, it is really the software use and configuration that gets not only most of the space, but also the largest portion of consideration and material in the text. (I also have one absolutely trivial peeve with the book. Schwartz abbreviates mailing list management programs as MLM, and, having lived through the spam wars with their relentless promotion of "Multi-Level Marketing" that acronym just bugs the heck out of me. It seems particularly inappropriate given the subject matter.) Chapter one provides a brief background explanation of email itself, and the basic mailing list functions. Creation and management of a list is introduced in chapter two, discussing list policies, mechanics, moderation, formats, mirroring to Usenet news, and choice of list software. The fundamental list creation and maintenance tasks are presented for Listproc, Majordomo, SmartList, and LISTSERV Lite in chapters three through six respectively. The use of sendmail for mailing list management is covered in chapter seven. Common mailing list problems, and brief solutions, are given in chapter eight. System installation, configuration, and administration of the Listproc, Majordomo, SmartList, and LISTSERV Lite packages are covered extensively in chapters nine to twelve. This section, in fact, takes up pretty much a third of the book. Four appendices list both user and owner/administrator commands in references that expand this material to fully half of the total pages in the book. The technical, or program, management side of the text is very good. Concepts are presented clearly, and the necessary commands are included and explained. The social side of the equation, though, is not up to the same standard. The exegesis furnished does illustrate the usual types of mailing list activities, the needs for structures, and the reasons for various types of formats. The troubleshooting chapter will be helpful and useful to those setting out on the venture. But the material does not have a great deal of depth, and the people problems of mailing lists are more complex than the technical issues. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1998
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