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internet2-mace-mlist-campus-survey-200409.html |
Jill Gemmill University of Alabama at Birmingham |
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Copyright © 2004 by Internet2 and/or the respective authors |
July 2004 |
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Internet2 Survey
of Mailing List Administrators
Prepared by
Internet2 MACE-MLIST
Introduction
Mailing List (List Manager) software is a
long-time "backbone" service supporting collaboration. Mailing lists traditionally assume that list
members have no organizational affiliation other than their membership in the
list itself. While this flexibility
lowers barriers to collaboration, it introduces an undesirable subscription
management burden when users participate in collaborations across a variety of
lists.
Such "stand-alone" assumptions make it
difficult to integrate applications with enterprise directory, authentication
and authorization environments. The I2 MACE-MLIST Working Group has
prepared this survey in order to:
-
learn what features are most important (or
most annoying) to higher education
-
ensure that at least one open source product
meets our needs
-
publish the community’s requirements for the
benefit of other product vendors
Who Should
Complete This Survey?
This survey
should be filled out by anyone who selects, installs, or manages one or more
mailing list services (a mailing list administrator). We are interested in hearing from central IT (official
organizational) administrators as well as school or department-level
administrators; please forward this survey to others on your campus who fit
this description.
Survey results
The survey
responses will be summarized and the results will be made available on the
MACE-MLIST web site. We request that you
identify yourself and your institution, as this information will help us
understand your responses better; you can be assured that your name will not be
published on our web site. Also, we will
represent the responses as a collection of personal opinions and not any type
of organizational or official point of view.
1. Do you (check
all that apply)
a. Select the
mailing list software to be used ?
b. Install the
mailing list software and updates?
c. Serve as the
mailing list service administrator?
If you do not
provide any of these functions, please go to our Virtual Organization
Membership List Management and Basic Communications survey <located here>
2. Do you manage
mailing list software as a service provided to:
a. Your entire
organization?
b. The school or
department level?
c. Just for
yourself and a few other people?
3. What type of
college/university are you?
a. Public
b. Private
c. Number of
students
d. Number of
faculty/staff
e. I’m not from a
college/university, my organization is a ________________________
4. What is the
name of your institution/organization?
<response not mandatory>
5. Which list
management software do you use? <check all that apply>
Name Version
LSOFT ListServ
Mailman
MajorDomo
Sympa
Other:
<NAME>
Other:
<NAME>
Other:
<NAME>
Other:
<NAME>
Other:
<NAME>
6. If you
administer only ONE mailing list package, please skip ahead to Question #9
7. If you use more
than one list management software, please explain why you have chosen to use
more than one.
8. If you use more
than one list management software, please complete a separate survey for each
system that you use.
In this survey, I am describing my use of:
Name Version
LSOFT ListServ
Mailman
MajorDomo
Sympa
Other:
<NAME>
Other:
<NAME>
Other:
<NAME>
Other:
<NAME>
Other:
<NAME>
9. What were the
main reasons for selecting this list management software over other choices
that were available?
10. What is the
total number of lists managed by your system?
11. How many
subscribers in your largest list (estimated size is fine).
12. What types of
lists are hosted by your service? (Check all that apply)
a. Campus internal
communications (administrative)
b. Campus internal
communications (student-oriented)
c. Course-related
communications (by course or department: education-oriented)
d. Virtual
Organization (research oriented)
e. Other
(community service oriented)
13. Do you have a
policy or guidelines on who can create or subscribe to mailing lists? If so,
can you supply a copy (URL preferred, PDF or WORD also OK) If not, how do you decide whether or not to
create a list when one is requested?
14. What are the
list management’s most desirable features?
(Describe an
occasion when this feature is used)
15. What are the
list management’s least desirable features and attributes?
(Describe an
occasion when this feature causes a problem because of being absent or
difficult to use)
16. How does the
mailing-list software process and send a large distribution of e-mails? (Does the mailing list software control the
sending rate of outgoing mail or not? If
you manage the sending rate of “bulk mail” by some other method, please explain
how you so this.)
17. Does the
mailing list separate a user’s identity from their email address?
a. Do you log in
to the list service as a single service, which may provide you with a number of
mailing lists, or is each list a separate service you must log in to?
b. Does the list
service allow one identity to use any email address they like for each list
they join?
18. Are you
currently evaluating other list management software? If so why? If no, why not?
19. How is the university facilitating workflow-approval for messages?
a. Do you allow or disallow sending to “everyone at the university”, “everyone in this school”, “all students”, etc. etc. If yes, how do you build the list of recipients?
b. Is there a university policy or guideline on this topic? If so, can you provide a copy (URL preferred, PDF or word doc also OK)
c. If you require approval for these types of bulk messages, how is the approval process facilitated?
20. Are you familiar with the Internet2 MACE-Dir-GROUPS work? http://middleware.internet2.edu/dir/groups/
21. If list management software were able to read group information from your directory in order to build the list membership dynamically, would that be useful?
If yes, would there be associated concerns you would want addressed to make it useable?
22. Are you familiar with Web initial sign-on ? http://middleware.internet2.edu/webiso/
23. Are you familiar with the Shibboleth project? http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/
24. If list management software could use web single sign on for authentication and authorize access using Shibboleth, would that be useful to you? If yes, what would be greatest benefit? If not, why not?
25. Are there capabilities we have not asked about that you wish were included in
26. What is your name? <not mandatory> <Will not be published on the web>
27. What is your title and department <not mandatory>
28. What is your email address? <a pointer to results will be emailed to you if you provide this> <not mandatory>