Join the APSA Mailing List (Listsev)

HOW TO JOIN THE MAILING LIST

It’s very simple: you just send an email message to LISTSERV@LIST.MSU.EDU.

The message is: SUBSCRIBE APSA-L your name. “Your name” is your name. Please use your name as it appears in official University records (i.e.the PAN form).

As an example, suppose Tony Witherspoon wanted to join the mailing list. While we all know him as Tony, the PAN form has his real name: George A. Witherspoon. Tony mails off the following message:

To: LISTSERV@list.msu.edu

Subject: SUBSCRIBE APSA-L george a. witherspoon

Note that (a) capitalization is not important, (b) spaces separate the individual items in the subscribe message and (c) there is no subject.

The mailing list is open only to APSA members, so you will need approval to join. Usually, this approval takes less than a day; you will receive notification when you have been approved. After you are approved, you will begin to receive the messages addressed to the APSA mailing list.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN DISCUSSIONS

If you want to post a message to the group, you address the message to APSA-L@LIST.MSU.EDU. Your message is then mailed to all the participants. Note that you must send this message from the ID which you used to subscribe to the mailing list. That is, in our example above, if Tony used the ID withersp@msu.edu when subscribing to the mailing list and he then mailed a message to the list from twithers@com.msu.edu, the message would be rejected. The system would not know that withersp@msu.edu and twithers@com.msu.edu were the same person.

When you do participate, remember that we need to keep this professional. Remember than your messages are public and that humans (not machines!) are reading your message.

CAUTION ON REPLIES:

It is very tempting to just select “reply” on your mail client and type away. Please watch out how the message headers (all that “received by,” “to,” “from,” “reply to” and etc. stuff) are included. The listserv system we use is extremely paranoid about mailing loops. Therefore, it refuses to post any message that includes the characters “APSA-L@LIST.MSU.EDU” in the message if there is a “To,” “From,” “Reply to” etc. on the same line. If you use the “reply” function of your mail client, most likely one of these message lines will include these characters. If it does, your message will not be posted.

LOOKING AT PAST DISCUSSIONS

The listserv maintains files of all past correspondence. These files are organized by the year and month. Therefore, all messages for the month of November, 2008 will be in a file named “APSA-L LOG0811.” September’s messages are in the file “APSA-L LOG0809.” To get these files you have to ask listserv. This is done by sending a message to listserv. The message is GET filename . So, for example, if you wanted all the messages from the month of October, 2008, you would send the following email:

To: LISTSERV@LIST.MSU.EDU

Subject: GET APSA-L LOG0810

Note that (a) capitalization is not important, (b) spaces separate the individual items in the message, (c) there is no subject and (d) there is NO period at the end of the message. This is true for all messages to listserv.

If you want several months of messages, your message can contain several “GET” lines.

HOW TO LEAVE THE MAILING LIST

You simply send the message UNSUBSCRIBE APSA-L to LISTSERV@LIST.MSU.EDU

IMPORTANT: Please remember to turn off any automatic signature process you may have. Listserv will try to process each line in your signature as a command!