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Mailing list system overview
The College of Education uses a campus-administered mailing list system to provide mailing lists @lists.education.illinois.edu. This system (a product called "Sympa") is provided and administered by campus Tech Services, and is used by other units for other domains. Within lists.education.illinois.edu, IT Partners @ Education has full access to provide support and automation.
Any unit in the college may create a mailing list and configure it to their liking with guidance from IT Partners, but most of the lists here have been created directly by IT Partners with automated memberships to simplify communication with various groups in the college community. For these lists, we define the criteria (e.g., enrollment criteria for a student list) and update membership in the list daily, and we assign moderators.
Purpose of Moderation
A moderators main job is to prevent accidental distribution of email to the list, such as "pocket dial" emails (we once had a grad student invite all the faculty to a blank event, and the student didn't even know it happened until they started getting emails from recipients who declined the event) or reply-alls (like an accidental reply-all to all the undergrads about a specific student). These accidents are infrequent, but the moderators serve as gatekeepers to prevent these issues. Depending on the mailing list and the intent of the unit responsible for the mailing list, a moderator might only check for these sorts of accidental emails, or they might review the content more carefully to determine if it is an appropriate use of the mailnig list.
Your lists
You can see the lists you are on and the lists you moderate by visiting https://lists.education.illinois.edu/lists/my.
If you are not logged in, the system will prompt you with an error message. Dismiss the error and use the "Campus Login" button (available in the middle of the page or in the top-right corner).
Any list that you moderate should show "Moderator" in parentheses after the list name.
How to Moderate
Step 1: Moderation Request Email Notification
When anyone sends an email to your mailing list, you will get a notification email from "your-list-request@lists.education.illinois.edu", as in the screenshot below.
You can see that the email that is being sent to the mailing list is attached to this moderation request. Click that attachment to review the email and determine whether to "distribute" or "reject" it, then close the attachment and return to this moderation request notification email.
Step 2: Respond to the Request
Once you have determined whether to distribute or reject, use the first "https" link in the email to sign in as a moderator and view the moderation request queue for this list, as in the screenshot below.
In the moderation request queue, check the box for the email you wish to distribute or reject. Typically, there is only one email here, but if multiple emails come to the same list at once, or if you are waiting to decide on an email that arrived earlier, there may be multiple emails here. Check the box, and then click either the "Distribute" or "Reject" button. When rejecting, you can choose whether to give the sender an automatic rejection notification email.
Other Considerations about Moderation
If the system says "No messages to moderate", then one of the other moderators already responded to this moderation request.
If a person sends the same email to two of the lists you moderate, you will receive two notification emails, and you must respond to each of them separately. (However, even if you approve both, any recipients on both lists will still receive only one copy.)
Because some email notifications need to be distributed quickly, we normally assign at least two moderators for each list. One person is informally designated as the "primary" moderator. This is the person who responds to moderation requests. If this person is unavailable, the backup moderator can step in. If an email is urgent, comes from someone with authority (like an announcement from the Dean's office) and non of the moderators are available, the sender can email support@education.illinois.edu and the IT Partners mailing list admins can also act as a moderator.
How to Request Help
If you have any questions or need any help using or moderating your list or if you have questions about the criteria for automatic list membership, contact support@education.illinois.edu.