Regulations / Conditions for use

Intended use

McGill LISTSERV® lists are intended to distribute messages related to McGill’s academic or administrative functions. These include discussions related to a McGill-approved research project, a field of academic study, or a course. Examples:

• Dissemination of information or discussion within a given department.
• Discussion about a specific administrative project.
• Discussion between members of the McGill community and a related organization such as another university or a McGill teaching hospital.
• Email exchange by a student organization contractually recognized by McGill University.

 

Ownership and owner responsibilities

Each LISTSERV® list must have at least one owner who is an active McGill faculty or staff member with an @mcgill.ca email address.

List owners are responsible for:

1. Advising individuals who will be pre-subscribed to the list of the list's purpose and how to unsubscribe themselves.
2. Responding to subscribers' requests for removal from the list in a timely manner.
3. Assisting subscribers with subscribing or unsubscribing to the list.
4. Correcting errors related to their list.
5. Responding to requests made by the LISTSERV® manager.

Failure of the list owner to act to resolve errors in a timely manner may result in the shutdown of the list or removal of particular subscribers if the errors are causing system-wide issues.

The primary owner establishes the management of McGill lists in accordance with these regulations and the Policy on Responsible use of McGill Information Technology Resources. The owner decides what constitutes appropriate discussion threads and keeps them on topic. This safeguards the usefulness of the list. The owner provides support to the users.

In order to reduce the risk of spam being sent to a list, new lists are set up as moderated lists by default. For a moderated list, the moderator must approve email sent to the list before it will be delivered to the list. Whenever possible, list owners should change their unmoderated lists to moderated lists to prevent spam. A list owner may use an unmoderated list if the list is an active discussion list, moderation is impractical, or an unmoderated list will negatively impact the intended use of the list.

 

Student organization lists

For a LISTSERV® list to be used by a student organization contractually recognized by McGill University, the format of the list address must be something-organization@lists.mcgill.ca (e.g., admins-ssmu@lists.mcgill.ca). Only an active faculty or staff member with an email address ending in @mcgill.ca can submit the request form; the requestor must be willing to be one of the list co-owners. See Ownership and responsibilities.

 

Permitted list types

Only two types of lists are permitted:

• Announce Only: Only the owner and authorized senders can post to the list
• Discussion: Only list members can post to the list

Public lists are not permitted.

 

Message sizes

The size of a message sent to a LISTSERV® list is limited to a maximum of 4MB. Users are encouraged to send links (URLs) to documents rather than attach large documents in their email to a list.

Inactive lists

IT Services will remove a list that has been inactive for more than 12 months.

Archived messages

Archived messages are retained for as long as the list exists.

Managing subscribers

LISTSERV® Administration will not populate LISTSERV® lists from University databases. The list owner(s) or list members are responsible for subscribing or unsubscribing members to the list.

In accordance with the Policy on Responsible use of McGill Information Technology Resources, an individual's email address should not be added to any LISTSERV® list unless:

• the individual has self-subscribed to the list, or
• the individual has given explicit opt-in permission to be subscribed to the list, or
• the sender is authorized by virtue of their function to populate the list with members of the department or faculty (e.g. an authorized departmental administrator may create lists that include staff members in their department, an authorized faculty administrator may create lists of students in their faculty, etc.). In this case, membership could be mandatory, and members cannot unsubscribe.
  
  

List owners must ensure that all messages sent to lists, other than those with mandatory membership, contain an unsubscribe link.

If a list will contain only @mcgill.ca, @mail.mcgill.ca, or @affiliate.mcgill.ca addresses, an Outlook list should be considered instead of a list.

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Update of LISTSERV® Email List Regulations

McGill IT Services has updated our LISTSERV® Email List Regulations in an effort to reduce the risk of lists receiving spam, and to conform with Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation.

Requests for lists that do not conform to the LISTSERV® Email List Regulations or to the Policy on Responsible use of McGill Information Technology Resources, should be escalated to the Chief Information Officer.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES: