E-Mail List Owner's Guide

I am the owner of WTVPals Email list on the net and have been for 5 years. I have written articles for Net4TV Voice including one dealing with Trolls on Newsgroups. I am the webmaster of LeFantome.com made with WebTV and computer. What I hope to convey here are some lessons I have learned to make a sucessful e-mail group and also the dynamics that make them sucessful. Many of these principals also apply to newsgroups and usenet.

My group began and was patterned after a popular email list on the Phantom of the Opera musical by Karin of ShadowSong. That one is a hard list just to be approved for and even harder to follow the rules. My list also has rules and an application process to join. Rules and knowing whom you are subscribing is a key to running a sucessful email group. I also use Google.com as a search engine by typing in the advanced editor the email address of the pospective member to screen them for posts in newsgroups prior to joining.

One of the things to learn about email group is to understand the dynamics of a group and specifically a email group or list. This is a guide I have found to be helpful.

LIFE CYCLE of an EMAIL GROUP

Regardless of official focal topic, every email discussion group can be expected to exhibit group dynamic processes. Some such phenomena are easily recognized as fairly mechanical: some kind of rules or norms must be established, there must be some mechanism for maintaining order and new members must somehow be integrated. Individual psychology also plays a role, although it is unclear how much depends on human nature and what can be explained by impersonal general systems theory.

At any rate, one consequence of group dynamics is the emergence of what has been called a "life cycle" (actually a progressive set of stages that eventuates either in dissolution of the mailing list or in oscillation between a subset of stages.

The following tongue-in-cheek description of such a life cycle has has become part of the Internet's anonymous folklore.

The Natural Life Cycle of Mailing Lists

Initial enthusiasm (people introduce themselves, and gush a lot about how wonderful it is to find kindred souls).

Evangelism (people moan about how few folks are posting to the list, and brainstorm recruitment strategies).

Growth (more and more people join, more and more lengthy threads develop, occasional off-topic threads pop up).

Community (lots of threads, some more relevant than others; lots of information and advice is exchanged; experts help other experts as well as less experienced colleagues; friendships develop; people tease each other; newcomers are welcomed with generosity and patience; everyone -- newbie and expert alike -- feels comfortable asking questions, suggesting answers, and sharing opinions).

Discomfort with diversity (the number of messages increases dramatically; not every thread is fascinating to every reader; people start complaining about the signal-to-noise ratio; person 1 threatens to quit if other people don't limit discussion to person 1's pet topic; person 2 agrees with person 1; person 3 tells 1 & 2 to lighten up; more bandwidth is wasted complaining about off-topic threads than is used for the threads themselves; everyone gets annoyed).

Smug complacency and stagnation (the purists flame everyone who asks an 'old' question or who responds with humor to a serious post; newbies are rebuffed; traffic drops to a doze-producing level of a few minor issues; all interesting discussions happen by private email and are limited to a few participants; the purists spend lots of time self-righteously congratulating each other on keeping off-topic threads off the list).

- OR -

Maturity (a few people quit in a huff; the rest of the participants stay near stage 4, with stage 5 popping up briefly every few weeks; many people wear out their second or third 'delete' key, but the list lives contentedly ever after).

The next thing that must be considered is the role of the owner of the email group. The owner and his/her moderators are important that they communicate and monitor the group at all times. If the owner is unavailable or on vacation it is doublely important the moderators take charge to look for possible trouble. On my group this task is easy because the moderators are experience and know what to look for. It is important that you know your moderators and know that they know what is important for your group.

Duties and Workload of the Owner

Interface with sponsor and host organizations
Set and revise policy
Screen new members (e.g., restriction to professionals only)
Publicize list
Initiate, instigate and foment discussions
Moderate and/or censor discussion
Make final decision about suitability of topic, etc.
Police member behavior and deal with infractions
Split list for special topics
Organize threads
Inform members of problems, technical issues
Handle subscription and status change requests
Format message tags, headers, footers
Detect and resolve technical problems
Change servers as necessary

Problems to avoid

On any list there are problems. The trick is to know and recognize the problems should they occur that can harm your list. Many new list owners think that the servers like yahoo or smartgroups can help them out in some of the problems they encounter. Nothing could be further from the truth. Servers for list seldom respond and there are just too many groups for them to take any active roles regarding TOS. It's up to the owners! The following are some areas to avoid.

Problems Developing on Email Lists

Problem areas:

System outage (need alternative messaging route?)

Loss of data (loss of membership list)

Loss of control (password, ownership privilege)

Misdirected messages (e.g., signoff requests sent to general list)

Spamming (unwanted commercial messages)

Exploitation and re-purposing (misuse of membership list, takeover by special-interest group)

Sabotage (hacker attack)

Flooding and bouncing (duplicate messages)

Errors (inadvertent removal of member, open posting of confidential information)

Infringements on privacy (cross-posting, open archives, etc.)

Flame wars

Rule violation

Leader's abuse of power (favoritism, bullying, retribution, betrayal)

Attacks on leader

A word about Trolls. I ask each member if they know what "flaming" or trolls are. If you don't know check this page out on TROLLS.Whatever the leader must be honest to his group and honest to the rules of the group that he wrote. Sometimes it is necessary to ban or unsubscribe a member even though the owner may personally like them for the good of the group. Owners need to remember this.

Rules

Every list has to have rules. My List rules address what I think is important for my group. Here are some guidelines to address rules in an e-mail group.

Categories of rules and instructions for users

Mission and focus of email list (and which topics are off-limits)

Membership (eligibility, enrollment, how to quit)

Authority (ownership, decision-making process, appeal)

Integrity (confidentiality, cross-posting to other lists, quoting without permission)

Etiquette (insults, flaming, excessive off-topic discussion)

Housekeeping (long messages, extensive quoting of other messages, length of signature bloc)

Changing own status (unsubscribing, suspension, digest-only)

Netiquette prohibitions

Personal attacks, insults, name calling, flaming Excessive foul or otherwise offensive language Hatred, prejudice based on race, religion, etc, aggressive espousal of generally discredited, offensive and unpopular doctrines

Persistent discussion of off-topic material

Publicly discussing someone after person was banned from the list

Spamming, posting commercial promotions and advertisements

Junk: excessive quoting, long signature blocs, duplicate messages, spoofing

Chain letters

Personal communications between individuals

It is important to remember here that sometimes things happen "off the list" that affect the list. If this happens and the list owner is notified it is important that action be taken. Key word here is "for the good of the list". Preditors, trolls sometimes get email addresses off your list and "do their thing" from there. Take all complaints by members of your list seriously and investigate throughly before taking action.

If any of you want to see what the FLAMERS LOOK LIKE just click on the link. (grin) Finally a good question to help you in your quest to have a great e-mail group on the net!!!!

Q: How many USENET users does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 435,235.

1 to change the bulb
4 to tell him he should have done it differently
365 to point out spelling/grammar errors in the first 5 posts
1,834 to flame the spell checkers
4,598 to correct spelling in spelling flames
6,785 to say please move to alt.spelling.lite.bulb
15,467 to say stop cross posting to soc.women and alt.rape.all.men.are.scum, alt.adoption, and s.a.a.(m)
23,456 to endlessly debate which method is superior
236,789 to concatenate all articles to date, then quote them, only to say, "Me Too"
106,345 to quote the "Me Toos" to say, "Me Three"
1 to propose new alt.change.lite.bulb newsgroup
89,345 to say this is just what alt.physics.cold_fusion was meant for, leave it here
10,584 to vote for alt.change.lite.bulb

BTW, if anyone reading this would like to join WTVPals just go to THIS SITE and I will be glad to sign you up! Happy Emails to YOU! Questions???? Email ME