Technology Services at Illinois provides an electronic mailing list management service to the University community to enhance the educational and research mission of the University. The service runs on a machine called lists.illinois.edu using the Sympa open-source software.

Rules for University mailing lists

Lists require some care to maintain. In order to reduce the chance of problems and to keep our service in line with the University mission, Technology Services has the following rules for lists:

1. The list must be managed or owned by a University of Illinois person. This person should have an up-to-date campus directory entry (including a phone number) so s/he can be easily and quickly contacted.
2. The list owner must have an email account that can take the load of mail that will come to the list. A student may be a list manager on one of the student machines as long as the account doesn't go over quota (i.e., fill up the student's allotted disk or spool space). This may require the list owner to log in every day to check for users that need to be removed from the list, take care of bounced messages, and answer questions from list users.
3. The list should have a strong tie to a campus sponsored program (i.e., some local research or educational use). For example, a list for a registered student organization would be considered, but a list for the Foosland Tiddlywinks Club would not be considered, unless they were a Registered Student Organization.
4. Lists can be created for class discussions, but we recommend that Canvas (our enterprise learning management system) be used instead for all class lists in order to better comply with FERPA.
5. It is preferrable that list names have a '-l' (dash l) at the end. This makes it easier for everyone to recognize its address as a mailing list.
6. Lists inactive for 6 months or more are subject to removal. We normally check near the end of the Fall and Spring terms for list inactivity. An email notice of a pending list removal due to inactivity will be sent to the primary list owner. If a list owner receives this notice, he/she can request that the list not be removed, but long-term maintenance of historical lists is not part of the intended service.
7. No list will be allowed to use so many resources that it inconveniences other users. If a list goes out of control for some reason, Technology Services reserves the right to temporarily disable it. If no solution can be found for the problem, Technology Services will be forced to terminate the list.
8. In general the list owner shall not add users to the list unless requested to do so by the subscriber. Subscribing unsuspecting people can cause delivery problems, violate anti-spam best practices, and could be considered harassment.
9. The list owner shall attempt to keep the list on-topic, and shall not allow the list to be used for unsolicited mail. Please read the Sympa Unwanted Mail policy for more details.

New lists

Request a new list (external link)