Mailing Lists for Web Sites (part 3)

Running Mailing Lists

The major mailing list packages allow for a variety of ways to confirm subscription requests. Most list admins would agree that it's a bad idea to allow people to sign up in a single step, because this allows people to sign other people up without their knowledge, which can lead to a big mess. Therefore, most mailing lists have some sort of a confirmation message. When you first sign up for the list, a message is sent to you asking if you do indeed mean to sign up for the list. Only when you reply to this message are you actually subscribed.

Since you want as many list members as possible, make the confirmation process as easy as you can. Mailing list software allows you to create very complex confirmation processes, with usernames, passwords and so forth, but this will discourage a certain number of people, and your list will grow far more slowly. I recommend setting things up so that one need only reply to the confirmation message in order to be subscribed.

Some list owners deliberately make it difficult to figure out how to unsubscribe, but this is a very bad idea, as we shall see. Unsubscribe instructions should be clearly posted on the list's home page, and should also be included at the end of every message. You should also provide an email address that goes directly to the list admin, so that if the automatic unsubscription process doesn't work, a user can contact a human who can figure out what went wrong.

If you promote your list, and mention it often on your Web site, you should see the list membership grow slowly but steadily. On most discussion lists, there will be few or no messages posted at first, so you may choose to prime the pump a little by submitting some appropriate questions and answers yourself. In fact, most lists don't really start to take off until they reach a certain critical mass of at least a couple of hundred subscribers. In my experience, this almost always happens in the same way, and it's rather interesting for the student of human nature.

Here's what usually happens. You set up a new list, and people start subscribing, but no one posts any messages. Once the list grows to two or three hundred members, somebody posts a question, and perhaps even elicits an answer or two. Suddenly about a dozen people send indignant messages asking why in the world they are getting these messages, and demanding to be removed from the list instantly! As long as no one was posting, they didn't realize they were on the list, but now they're hopping mad.

Why does this happen? Theoretically it's difficult or impossible to subscribe someone else without their consent, and names do not simply add themselves. The fact is, however, that on every discussion list, a certain number of people will get signed up who don't want to be, and may in fact have no idea what a mailing list is or how it works. Perhaps some of them confused the act of signing up for a mailing list with the act of registering on a Web site. Perhaps some thought they were signing up to win a color TV. Perhaps some of them are just plain stupid. I really don't know how it happens, but it most certainly does, and managing unwilling list members is one of the most important, and sometimes exasperating, tasks for the list admin.

As many of you may have noticed, receiving unsolicited email sends some people right off the deep end. You'd think that their email access was costing them a hundred bucks a second, the way some of them carry on (in fact, in many countries, Internet access is charged by the minute, at very expensive rates). Now, everyone who is familiar with mailing lists knows that if you wish to unsubscribe from a list, you send an unsubscribe message to the "command" address (for example, majordomo@companyname.com), not to the list itself. But of course the folks we're talking about don't know that, and can't be bothered to figure it out. They will send messages to the list itself, demanding to be removed. Some will send dozens of messages, and some will use very colorful, belligerent and obscene language.

These annoying and completely useless messages are going to every member of the list, and if there are a lot of them, the list itself becomes an irritating piece of crap instead of a useful resource. If this goes on too long, your valued readers will start unsubscribing themselves in droves. They want to be on the list, but they want to read about whatever the subject of the list is, not a bunch of vulgar language and death threats. Therefore, one of the most important tasks of the list admin is to nip this kind of thing in the bud. Keep a close watch on your list, and when someone sends a message to the list asking to be removed, manually remove him/her at once. Don't bother trying to explain how mailing lists work, or rebuking them for their rudeness. Get 'em out the door fast.

There's one in every crowd!

Ignorant, unwilling members are not the only ones who can ruin a list. Worse yet are spammers - they love to get their hands on big fat mailing list addresses, and two or three messages about Viagra or the latest weight-loss scam will have your members running for the exits, and cussing you as they go.

Some mailing list owners are tempted to sell or "rent" their lists to people who want to send ads to the list. Personally, I feel that this is just plain wrong. When someone signs up for a discussion list about scuba diving, they have consented to receive messages about scuba diving - not about get-rich-quick schemes and chain letters. Once someone else gets their mitts on your list, you have no control over what they do with it. They may use it to spam, or they may pass it on to other spammers. The members can always unsubscribe from your list, but once they get on a spam list, they're on for life. If you do plan to pass your list on to others, state this fact clearly on the list's home page, and don't be surprised if the quantity and quality of list members that you attract turns out to be small.

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, a spammer will join your list and start spewing out the spam. This is usually fairly easy to discourage. Set up your discussion list so that only list members can post to the list, and immediately remove any members suspected of spamming. Also, some mailing list programs allow you to set things up so that messages which are rejected by the list do not get bounced back to the sender. This makes it harder for spammers to figure out what's going on.

Another potential problem with public discussion lists is the tendency of people to go off on tangents, and start generating lots of messages that have nothing to do with the list subject matter. Vulgar language is an issue that often creates flurries of tangential messages. Lucy Brown uses a colorful expletive in a message, Polly Peacham tells Ms. Brown to keep her offensive language to herself, then Jenny Diver chimes in, calling Ms. Peacham a prude and extolling the virtues of free speech. This can go on for a long time - a bluegrass music mailing list which I subscribe to was once completely co-opted for about a month by a discussion of this kind.

Other popular tangents are viruses, urban legends, conspiracy theories and other similar things. Some people have an endless amount to say about viruses, and one "well-meaning warning" can set off an avalanche of virus-related anecdotes. To say nothing of stories about people having their kidneys stolen, or being shot for flashing their lights at someone on the highway, etc. etc. The pattern is usually similar to the one described above: one member posts a warning about some dubious danger, another tells him/her that he is a fool, a third member tells the second one to lighten up, and so on and on.

At the risk of going off on a tangent myself, I'll recount an amusing anecdote. A member of a stock-investing list that I subscribe to had his car stolen by some members of another racial group. Apparently he felt a need to vent his rage to as many people as possible, so he posted a description of the incident, complete with racial slurs and other immoderate language, to the list. Needless to say, a blizzard of messages came in, condemning him for his racism. This was followed by a smaller wave of messages championing his free speech rights. Later the original poster came back and apologized profusely for his racist remarks, and begged to be excused for speaking in the heat of anger. Over the next few weeks, the list featured in-depth discussions of the issues of racism, free speech and automobile security. Alas, little was said about the evils of posting irrelevant material to mailing lists, and even less about stocks or investing.

As a list administrator, of course, it's up to you to decide how to handle tangents like these. Some folks figure the more messages the merrier, but most agree that the most valuable lists are those that stick closely to their topics. On the other hand, there's a lot to be said for a free and open discussion, and nobody likes a heavy-handed admin who instantly rebukes anyone who posts anything the least bit off-topic. Personally, I prefer to let such things burn themselves out, and will intervene only if I sense an avalanche beginning, or if one of the taboo topics, like politics, religion or PC vs Mac, is broached. Then, I gently remind the list that there are many other mailing lists that discuss these topics, but we're here to talk about scuba diving (or whatever), thank you.

We've been talking about "unmoderated" lists, but if you really want to control the discussion, you can have a "moderated" list. On a moderated list, every single message goes to the list admin, and only after the admin gives his/her approval is it sent to the actual list. The advantage of a moderated list is that the "signal-to-noise ratio" is very good, and list members are never bothered by unsubscribe requests, diet pills or virus scares. The disadvantage is that it's a lot of work for the admin. If a list grows quickly, the admin may get snowed under. Then the messages will be delayed until the admin breaks out the snow shovels, and the immediacy of the list is lost. For lists which deal in time-sensitive information (like hot stock tips), the delay imposed by a moderator may be unacceptable.

Another useful feature of the main mailing list programs is the ability to create a "digest" version of the list. Instead of receiving every individual message posted to the list, many people find it more convenient to receive a single message each day which includes the text of all or most of the messages. Many popular lists give members the option of receiving the digest version. The drawback is the same as for a moderated list - somebody has to put the digest together.