Mailing lists for people in Informatics

This is a quick guide which suggests how to negotiate the twisty maze of Informatics mailing lists, minimizing the number of uninterested readers and maximizing the number of interested readers. Thanks to Julian Bradfield for providing it.

Key points:

• Seminar announcements go to seminars@inf and no other general list.
• inf-general is not for official or academic announcements.
• inf-people is for messages to everybody in Informatics buildings.
• Conference etc. announcements should go to relevant institute lists, or to research-staff and research-students if they're general informatics conferences.

General rules: do not spam lists. If your message is spam, do not send it. If it is not spam, there is no need to apologize for it being spam (because it isn't). Spam is unsolicited commercial (or pseudo-commercial fraudulent) email.

Which list to use? See
https://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/systems/email/lists/
for a categorized list of lists. The names are often confusing, and the use of hyphens is arbitrary (but becoming less so), so there's a crib sheet for the most useful lists at the end of this page.

If you know precisely whom you need to reach, all is well. Otherwise, follow this guide:

Is your message work-related (including official social events)?

NO: send it to inf-general@inf, unless it's clearly only of interest to a smaller group (e.g. members of one institute, or inf-bikes@inf) and that group allows non-work-related messages. STOP.
YES: Continue the flow chart.

Does your message announce a talk or event that is open to and genuinely of interest to the general public, not just academics?

YES: Send it to seminars@inf, and inf-general@inf if you wish. STOP.
NO: continue...

Does your message announce an academic seminar, lecture, talk or other such event, in or near Edinburgh?

YES: Send it to seminars@inf, and optionally to a subject-related specialist list, or perhaps to an institute list. STOP
NO: continue...

Is your message relevant only to one or more easily identifiable subgroup, such as all members of an institute, all teaching staff within an institute, all teaching staff, all researchers, all admin staff, PhD students, all staff?

YES: Is your message relevant to most of those in the groups?
YES: Send it to those groups. STOP.
NO: Think about whether you should be targetting people personally. If not, send it to those groups. STOP.
NO: continue...

Your message appears to require broadcasting to many hundreds of people.

Is it relevant only to people with Informatics office space?
YES: Send it to inf-people. STOP.
NO: 'Fraid you actually have to think. If your message is unimportant, in the sense that nobody will be disadvantaged by not reading it, perhaps inf-general.
If it's desirable that everybody reads it, then staff@inf and/or students@inf (or sublists thereof). STOP.

Quick guide to useful lists:

inf-general

Unofficial list for general posts to people with offices in Informatics buildings, but not non-resident members. Intended mostly for non-work postings. No topic restrictions, but please don't send seminar announcements here unless they're genuinely lectures for the general (university) public. This list is optional - people are not required or even expected to read it - so no official notices should go here.

inf-people

This is an official list for people who have an office in one of our buildings. It's for matters related to the buildings and residence therein (food availability, bits falling off the roof, toilets, lifts, etc.). It is not suitable for academic announcements.

All-informatics staff lists:

staff	all staff
academic-staff	faculty - (Senior) Lecturers, Professors, Readers, Chairs, University Teachers or Chancellors Fellows
pdra-staff	just postdocs, research associates, research fellows, etc.
research-staff	postdocs (pdra-staff) AND faculty (academic-staff)
teaching-staff	just those staff involved in the current session (or likely to be involved in the next session) in active teaching (so in general those with a specifically allocated teaching or teaching-related duty)
admin-staff	what it says
cos	computing staff
technical-staff	what it says

Institute lists, using lfcs as an example:

lfcs-members	all members
lfcs-staff	supposedly teaching and research staff, but actually all staff
lfcs-teaching	faculty in LFCS (including associate members)
lfcs-research	postdocs BUT NOT faculty
lfcs-director	Director of LFCS
lfcs-assoc	Associates of LFCS
lfcs-sec	Administrative Secretary
lfcs-visitors	visitors hosted by LFCS
lfcs-students	research students in LFCS
lfcs-academic	LFCS academic staff
lfcs-academic-profs	LFCS Professors
lfcs-academic-nonprofs	LFCS Academics, excluding Professors

Research student lists:

research-students	Ph.D., M.Res., M.Sc. by Research etc.
phd-degree-students	Ph.D. only

plus the institute lists already mentioned.

Taught student lists: the most useful are

students	ALL students, taught and research (a LOT of people...)
msc-students	taught M.Sc. students
ug-students	undergraduates
ug4-students	undergraduates in 4th year (etc.)
ug5-students	undergraduates in 5th (MInf final) year

Each taught course (taking cp as an example) has
cp-students (students, and also staff)
cp-tutors
cp-demonstrators

Apparently you're not supposed to want to mail just the course lecturers any more, as there are no lists provided.