UCSF Listserv Guidelines and Requirements

Office of Academic and Administrative Information Systems (OAAIS)-Customer Support Services provides electronic mailing lists (listservs) to the UCSF community. In order to keep these listservs functional and useful, they need to adhere to the following guidelines and procedure requirements:

Listserv Ownership and Purpose

In accordance with University of California Systemwide policies and procedures governing the use of electronic communication, a listserv must:

Serve the mission of UCSF
Not violate the UC Electronic Communications Policy
Be owned by at least one current UCSF faculty member, staff member or student
Have a current faculty or staff sponsor for student-owned listservs

For more information, see:

UCSF Mission Statement:
http://www.ucsf.edu/about_ucsf/mission.html

UC Electronic Communications Policy (Sections III-C and III-D):
http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/coordrev/policy/PP081805ECP.pdf

Listserv Owner Responsibilities

The listserv owners are responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of each listserv they own. The functionality of one listserv may adversely affect the functionality of all the listservs on the server when problems or issues arise with that listserv. Because of this, listserv owners are required to:

Maintain the subscriber list for each listserv owned. This includes, but is not limited to, updating or removing invalid subscriber addresses when notified of them via the Listserv Daily Error Monitoring reports sent out by the server.
Maintain the owner and editor information for each listserv owned. This includes, but is not limited to, making sure the list has at least one owner who is a current UCSF faculty member, staff member or student listed with a current UCSF email address.
Leave the “Send=Confirm” feature in place, requiring that all postings be confirmed by the sender before being released to the listserv subscribers.
Leave the “Auto-Delete” feature in place, which will automatically remove a subscriber with an invalid address if that address generates 20 or more error notices within a 30 day period. (Note: The owner may adjust this feature to reduce the number of error notices and/or reduce the period of time covered by this feature, but these parameters may not be increased.)
Notify OAAIS-Customer Support when a listserv is no longer needed and should be removed from the server.

Note: Owners of automated listservs, those listservs that have the subscriber list automatically generated from Campus Locator System (CLS) information, are not able to maintain the listserv and subscriber information directly. However, the owners are still responsible for maintaining the listservs. Contact OAAIS-Customer Support to report changes with listserv ownership or editor information, or to report invalid subscriber address information.

Listserv Naming Convention

The name of a listserv:

Must have a minimum of three characters and a maximum of 14 characters
May be alpha-numeric
May contain dashes ( - ) or underscores ( _ )
May not contain spaces ( ) or other special characters ( &, *, #, etc. )

Listserv Description

The description of a listserv:

Must have no less than three characters and no more than 55 characters
May be alpha-numeric
May contain spaces ( ) and special characters ( -, _, &, *, etc. )

Listserv Message Posting Guidelines

General guidelines for posting messages to listservs are:

Include a meaningful Subject line
Plain text format is recommended. Stylized and HTML text formats and graphical web pages can be sent, but may require special technical skills.
Avoid attachments except small PDF documents. Provide a link to a web page for any other documents.
Limit the size of the message to 4MB, including all attachments. Messages larger than 4MB will not be processed by the Listserv server and will bounce back to the sender.

Listserv Activity

To be considered active, a listserv:

Must have a valid Owner email address
Must have a valid main Editor email address, for those listservs with editors
Must receive one or more valid (non-SPAM) postings within any 12 month period

Listserv Archives

Those listservs set up to archive:

May have archives for the current calendar year and the two prior calendar years only (Exceptions will be made for Administrative and Computing listservs)
May not have an archive index larger than 18MB
May have archived postings removed from the server at any time if a posting or index size adversely effect the server function
May, at the request of the Owner, have removed archives transferred to a CD and campus mailed to the Owner

Should a listserv cease to meet one or more of these requirements the files for that listserv may be altered or deleted from the server. The Listserv Administrator will make every attempt to contact the current list owner(s) prior to changing or deleting the listserv. However, if an issue with a listserv adversely affects other customers’ use of the service, immediate actions will be taken. Once service is restored, the List Administrator will attempt to contact the listserv owner(s).

Listserv Assistance

For assistance managing listservs and subscriber lists, to report a problem or issue with a listserv or for additional information regarding listservs, contact OAAIS-Customer Support Services via:

(415) 514-4100, option 2
customersupport@ucsf.edu
http://help.ucsf.edu/

Edited 08/10/2007 by Danica Azarin-Burdine

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