Dear IRListers,

When I took over the list 4-5 years ago, we had about 1200 users, and we were sending out one or two messages a *month*.  Now we have about 2300 addresses worldwide on IRList now, and we send 40 to 50 messages a month, on average. Some of these addresses are institutional distribution lists themselves, so we probably have way-wider reach !

As you know, IRList messages come to you from the University of Sheffield, UK. We all owe thanks to Mark Sanderson and LISTmasters at Sheffield for all their help in running the list. As of last week, our SIGIR list irlist (aka SIG-IRList)  has been moved to the new Mailing Lists service (still at Sheffield) at lists.shef.ac.uk . The new software has many features to manage messages and users, and I am getting up to speed on the features available to me. Some things remain the same, but there are some differences in email addresses and the way content will be processed now.

In this message, I want to tell you about what’s changed. In addition, I’ll use this opportunity to give you a peek behind the scenes to tell you what I look for in the process of editing your submissions, and suggest ways to spiff up your messages. So please indulge me for a few minutes. And please send me your comments and suggestions to improve the process.

Here are the main changes for all users:

·         To submit an article, e-mail IRList@lists.shef.ac.uk. Please use a descriptive subject line (as described below).

·         To subscribe, send mail to sympa@lists.shef.ac.uk, with the subject: SUBSCRIBE irlist firstname lastname

·         To unsubscribe, send mail to sympa@lists.shef.ac.uk, with the subject: UNSUBSCRIBE irlist email

[The email address is required only if you want to unsubscribe with an address other than the address with which you send the message]

In the new process, I will not have an opportunity to edit your messages. So please create your message following the suggestions here:

      Suggestions

1.       Please use a descriptive subject line: Mention if it’s a CfP (Call for Papers), a Job posting, a Data or Software offer etc. If it’s a conference or similar meeting, mention a short name of the conference, dates and venue of the meeting in the subject. If it’s a job, mention the title, and the location of the job opportunity. 

2.       Keep the content matter short and self-contained. Provide a URL where they can get more details. Ensure you mention relevant venues and dates. Make sure the venues include  the country. Make sure the dates include month  name rather than a month number (to avoid ambiguity). 

3.       Send your message as inline text and not as an attachment.

4.       Send your messages early.

5.       Please update your subscription if your email address changes.

Additional Details:

Submissions:  In the earlier process, I read each of the messages I got for IRList. I decide about 10 messages a month are not really aimed at the general IRList audience, so these don’t get sent to you. I edit the other 40+ messages every month, looking for complete information, looking for errors,  cleaning up some formatting and editing for length. For example, I look at date formats – we go out all across the world, so we don’t want to see dates like 7/5/2009 – is that July 5^th or May 7^th? I look to see if the dates and the venue for the meeting (if it’s a meeting) are clearly mentioned – this may seem odd, but I’ve had to  check back with submitters to get full details in the message. I try and ensure the country is mentioned (e.g. as Paris, France, rather than just Paris).   I also make sure there’s a URL for the meeting. If the list of organizers, PC members etc is too long, I usually substitute that with a pointer to the meeting URL.  I try to thwart email trolls by adding random spaces in the sender’s email address. I make a subject line which tells readers what kind of posting it is (CfP/Job/Data etc), and if it’s a meeting the name, venue and dates of the meeting. Please keep these in mind as you create your submission for IRList.

I have empirically found that 4 messages a day is reasonable. We get a bunches of messages to send out, so I don’t want to hold them up. On the other hand, if we send too many on a single day, we see a lot of people leaving the list. I’ll continue to keep to this self-imposed limit. I do most of my IRLIST work late in the day. I try not to do SIGIR stuff over the weekend. And occasionally I am away from my email for a few days, but I usually warn people of possible delays. So you may not see your mail going out as soon as you sent it to the list. But I try to keep the delays small.

If you send your notice as an attachment,  it’s a little more work to edit and send it out. So please send your submissions as inline text. We’ve had some encoding problems with Unicode text, so if possible use plain text format messages. Remember your message travels from your machine to servers in Sheffield, UK and then to Redmond, WA, USA, and after I edit it, it goes back to Sheffield and from there to the list members – it’s a wonder of technology that all of this works fine almost all the time !

I have been posting IRList posts to the blog http://searchtextminingspaces.live.com/ and I will find a way to continue to update this blog.

I have a few postings in the queue that I have to send out – sorry about the delay in sending these as we get used to the new system.

Subscriptions: With the old software, I get a message every time someone sends a subscribe message, and I have to OK the membership. This process will continue to be the same. I also will continue to get a notification when people leave the list. One of the neat features in the new software helps us manage bounced messages. If you’ve ever managed a distribution list, you know that bounced mail can be hard to deal with. For every single message I get 200 to 400 bounce messages  for various reasons (mailboxes being over-quota, people moving, network issues etc.)! A number of Outlook message processing rules help me maintain (relative!) sanity! But the new software blocks bounce messages; it also maintains bounce counts and what not, warns people first if they bounce too often, and removes them from the list of they bounce way too often. But please also do your bit by updating your email address when it changes. The new process even lets you unsubscribe from a different email address!

Thank you for reading this message. Once the list has stabilized, as I had mentioned earlier, I will start looking for someone to take over the list. Meanwhile, thanks also for the opportunity to be

Your IRList editor,

n  Chandra

Raman Chandrasekar

irlist-editor@acm.org

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This SIGIR-IRList message and the SIG-IRList Digest (a moderated IR newsletter), are brought to you by SIGIR, distributed from the University of Sheffield and edited by Raman Chandrasekar (irlist-editor@acm.org).

• To submit an article, e-mail IRList@lists.shef.ac.uk
• To subscribe, send mail to sympa@lists.shef.ac.uk , with the subject: SUBSCRIBE irlist firstname lastname
• To unsubscribe, send mail to sympa@lists.shef.ac.uk, with the subject: UNSUBSCRIBE irlist email
  [The email address is required only if you want to unsubscribe with an address other than the address with which you send the message]
  
  
• For more info, visit: http://www.sigir.org/sigirlist/
• IRList postings can be seen at  http://searchtextminingspaces.live.com/
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