We need to explain why mailing lists are good and then give a list of all the mailing lists available.

We need to explain how you can find out which mailing lists you are on and how you can apply to be put on or taken off.

Finally we need to explain how to browse through the emails sent from/to a mailing list.

A lot of this information is available on the MailingLists wiki page:

http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=MailingLists

You can also visit http://lists.jboss.org to see all of the lists and subscribe/unsubscribe or edit your settings.

New Design

Mailing lists were one of the first many-to-many communication tools available on the internet and are still very popular today. They allow a group of people (the members of the mailing list) to communicate by sending emails to the list address. Each email that arrives is distributed to all the list members (also known as subscribers) and then typically archived to keep a record of discussions that take place.

jboss.org currently uses the GNU Mailing List Manager application called Mailman to manage its mailing lists located at http://lists.jboss.org.

Visiting http://lists.jboss.org allows you to see all of the public mailing lists currently available.

Clicking on a list name takes you to a page where you can see more information about the list, view the archived emails and subscribe or unsubscribe yourself. Once you are subscribed you can also change your subscription options from here.

To read the page in a different language simply make a selection from the drop-down box in the right-hand corner and and press the 'View this page in' button.

Features

Welcome email

Mailing lists can be configured to send a generic welcome email to new subscribers. This contains the details of the list they have subscribed to, their password and a set of URLs they can use to manage their subscription. A custom welcome message can be added if necessary to explain how the list is configured or to maybe just to give a seasonal greeting!

Goodbye email

Mailing lists can also be configured to send a generic goodbye email to members who unsubscribe. A custom goodbye message can be added if necessary to thank the member for their participation or maybe to wish them well for the future.

Password reminders

When you subscribe to a mailing list you are requested to either enter a password or have one generated for you. This is done to prevent other people from accessing your subscription without your permission. Whilst you are subscribed your password will be emailed to you once a month as a reminder.

Multiple language support

When you subscribe to a mailing list you can choose which language you would like to receive automatically generated messages in. Unfortunately this translation capability does not extend to messages written by list members. The convention for JBoss mailing lists is to write all messages in English.

Daily Batch Delivery

Instead of receiving each new email distributed to list members, you can choose to receive one email per day containing all messages sent over the past 24 hours. This can help to prevent you from being overloaded with email when list activity is high.

Mailing lists

Any JBoss project can apply to have some or all of the following lists setup:

For example the JBoss Cache project has:

jbosscache-announce@lists.jboss.org

jbosscache-commits@lists.jboss.org

jbosscache-issues@lists.jboss.org

jbosscache-dev@lists.jboss.org

jbosscache-users@lists.jboss.org

If you need to set up lists for a project then just email the mailman administrator (mailman-admin@lists.jboss.org) with the following information:

• The project name.

• The lists that you need from the above table.

• The administrators for each list. Usually the project lead will be an administrator.

For historical reasons there are 6 mailing lists that don't quite follow the above pattern:

These were originally used for the JBoss AS project before any of the other projects came along.

List administrators

Each mailing list has one or more administrators. These people can add and remove members from the list and can choose to accept or reject subscription requests if they wish. List administrators can also perform moderation of the lists if necessary by holding onto postings before approving or rejecting them. Usually list members can post directly to the list without prior approval but postings from non-members are moderated. This helps to prevent spam from people who find out the list address.

List members

In order to protect the privacy of members and to prevent them from being targeted for spam, only the Site Administrators and List Administrators can view the member lists.