Launchpad Mailing Lists

Launchpad allows teams to setup a discussion mailing list which is open to all members of the team. For the technically minded, Launchpad mailing lists are managed by [http://www.list.org GNU Mailman] although we have simplified the web interface, allowing you to administer multiple lists through Launchpad easily. Using Launchpad alleviates the need for external mail hosting and simplifies life for users and administrators who can use a single Launchpad account to manage their participation in multiple mailing lists.

Benefits

Using Launchpad to host your mailing lists has several advantages over self-hosted lists.

• Simplified subscription management. Instead of maintaining a separate password for every list your users participate in, they can use their single Launchpad login to update their email address and subscription preferences for any list.

• Post from any email. Most email lists require you to use a specific email address when you post to that list. Launchpad, however, can know about multiple email addresses you have validated, and so you can use any of those email addresses to post to any list that you participate in through Launchpad.

• Simplified administration. People who administer multiple lists in multiple projects will find that Launchpad greatly improves their ability to control list subscriptions. Launchpad's Mailman implementation represents best-practice with regard to mailing list setup, designed by folks who run hundreds of lists. Use one Launchpad account to administer as many lists as you need, across as many projects as you want.

• Automatic archiving and distribution. Launchpad lists are automatically archived for history, in a format that is easily cataloged by search engines. Copies are also archived on mail-archive.com, a popular long-term list archive site.

• Sophisticated membership management. Teams already support many sophisticated ways of controlling membership - they can be tightly controlled, entirely open, moderated, or invitation-only. Since teams govern participation in Launchpad-hosted mailing lists, you can setup a list with whichever governance model suits you best.

• Natural fit to Launchpad teams. Many projects use Launchpad teams to group their users and developers into convenient teams. Those teams can be given different permissions in Launchpad, and now can also have mailing lists associated with them.

Using Launchpad hosted lists

Launchpad mailing lists are team-oriented; every team may have one mailing list, and every mailing list is associated with exactly one team. Any member of the team may subscribe to the team's mailing list but team members are not required to participate on the mailing list.

When you join a list, you designate one of your Launchpad-validated email addresses on which to receive mail from that list. You may post to any mailing list from any of your validated email addresses, but you will only receive messages from each list on the designated address for that list. You may also ask Launchpad to use your preferred email address and have mail from that list sent to your current preferred email address, whatever that happens to be at the time.

Note:

• Postings by people who are not Launchpad members, or are not members of the team, are immediately discarded.

• All Launchpad mailing list messages are publicly archived, and the archives are open to everyone, not just Launchpad or team members. If you have any issues with information available in the archives, you should contact [http://help.launchpad.net/#head-9562b4c8ee3bbaca8f0d0719f973269f13539ced the Launchpad administrators], however our general policy is never to remove archive messages or information contained therein.

Subscribed team members may post their messages to myteam@lists.launchpad.net and the archives for the team mailing list is always available at http://lists.launchpad.net/myteam.

Establishing a mailing list

If you are a team administrator, look on your team overview page. You will see an action called Configure mailing list:

• attachment:configure.png

• Click on this action and then click the Apply for Mailing List button.

  • attachment:apply.png
• Your mailing list application now needs to be approved by the Launchpad administrators. We handle new mailing list application requests several times per day, and we will enable your mailing list as soon as possible.
• Once your mailing list is approved, go to your team's overview page and you should now see a link in the Summary section saying "Mailing list archive". While your archive will be empty until the first message is posted to your mailing list, once you see this link in the Summary section, you know that your mailing list is live. attachment:archive.png

Note that you can also set your Launchpad mailing list to be your team's contact address.

Subscribing to a mailing list

Before you can send or receive messages on your mailing list, you must subscribe to it. This includes the team owner who requested the mailing list. Once your list is live (see above), these are the steps you need to take to subscribe to the mailing list.

• Go to your

  [https://launchpad.net/people/+me/+editemails personal list subscriptions page].

• Toward the bottom of the page, you will see a list of all teams that you are a member of and that have a mailing list.
• Use the drop-down menu to select which of your registered email addresses

  should be subscribed to which mailing list, and then click Update Subscriptions. attachment:subscribe.png

• Within a minute or two you should be a member of the mailing list and you should be able to post to the list.

Using your mailing list

Using your mailing list is the easiest part of this process! If your team is named myteam, then once the list is live and you have subscribed to it, just send a message to myteam@lists.launchpad.net in your mail reader of choice. After a few minutes, depending on network latencies, you should receive your message in your inbox, and the message will appear in the archive.

Note: if you use Gmail and you do not see your own posts arrive in your inbox, it is probably because of [http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq02.008.htp this issue]. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it, but if you check your list's archive, your message should appear there.

Unsubscribing

Unsubscribing is easy. Just visit your [https://launchpad.net/people/+me/+editemails Launchpad mailing list subscriptions] page, scroll down to the list of teams you're subscribed to, and chose Don't Subscribe for any list you want to get off of. Click Update Subscriptions.

Posting to lists without subscribing

If you want to make a one-off post to a list, you don't have to subscribe. Instead, you can post to it using any email address registered in your Launchpad profile.

Your post will be held for moderation and it is up to the relevant team's administrators to decide whether or not to accept your post.

List administration

Anchor(moderation)

Moderating posts from non-subscribers

From time to time, you may find that people post to your mailing list without first subscribing.

So long as the posts are from registered Launchpad users, Launchpad holds the posts for you - as a team administrator - to moderate. When there are new posts to moderate, you can see them by following the link in the Actions menu on your team's overview page.