This page tells you how to migrate a mailing list from the Informatics service (lists.inf) to the Information Services (IS) Sympa Mailing List service.

You can find more information regarding this via our blog post:
https://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/systems/2024/11/26/retirement-of-lists-inf-ed-...

1. Create the list

To create a mailing list in Sympa: navigate to https://mlist.is.ed.ac.uk/ and, once logged in, choose the 'Create List' option.

IS requests that all Informatics mailing lists be prefixed with 'inf-'. For example, if you wanted to create a 'foo' mailing list for Informatics, you would name it 'inf-foo'.

IS provides a guide to creating new mailing lists. Here's an example of the information needed to create a new list:

  • List name: inf-foo (note the 'inf-' prefix).
  • List type: We recommend discussion_list. This just presets some list settings - they can be changed later if not appropriate.
  • Subject: The list's proper name, so inf-foo could be "Foo Mailing List", or similar.
  • Topic: Science and Engineering/Informatics
  • Description: A brief description of what the list is.

2. Configure the list

Once your request has been approved, we recommend changing the following settings. You can find them by going to the "Admin" page on the left-hand side of your mailing list, or going to https://mlist.is.ed.ac.uk/lists/admin/your-list (changing your-list to your list name). These options are in the "Edit List Config" dropdown menu.

These are a few settings that you may wish to look at as Sympa has a lot of options. As lists differ, you may want to consult the Sympa documentation at https://mlist.is.ed.ac.uk/lists/help/admin-editlist.html to find the configuration that works best with your list. You can follow our suggestions as appropriate:

  • Sending/receiving setup > Who can send messages - Set as appropriate e.g.:
    • restricted to subscribers - Anyone else is rejected.
    • restricted to local domain, subscriber or moderated - Any address in ed.ac.uk and list members can post directly to the list, others are held for moderation.
    • Public list - anyone can post directly to this list.
  • Sending/receiving setup > Reply address - If you want the way replying to emails to be handled in a similar way to Mailman, the best option is "list". However, IS recommend replies go to the poster instead.
  • Sending/receiving setup > Subject Tagging - If migrating from lists.inf, you may want to remove the inf- prefix from the subject.
  • Privileges > Who can subscribe to the list - Select whatever seems most appropriate, e.g:
    • Owners approval - set this for lists where there are a small amount of people likely to join, for lists of team members.
    • For anyone without authentication - set this for lists where anyone can join, such as a project, with a public mailing list
    • Restricted to local domain users, or moderated if this list is likely to be open for people who are studying at the School or University
  • Privileges > Who can unsubscribe - Open, with confirmation. This allows anyone to unsubscribe from the list, which is good from a data protection point of view.
  • Archives > Store distributed messages into archive - You may want to enable archiving, as it is disabled by default.
  • Miscellaneous > Regular expression to prevent loops with robots - This will not need to be changed in most instances, however, if this is a list that receives mail from automated systems or other lists, this may need to be changed.
  • Message templates - The defaults are likely fine, but if you had changed your subscribe or unsubscribe email on Mailman, then you will need to change it here too.
  • Blocklist - If you had a custom blocklist on Mailman, you can copy across your settings here.

3. Add subscribers

You can populate the list with users from a list of emails, or point people at the subscribe URL, and let people add themselves.

The School of Informatics believes that due to potential concerns with handling data under the GDPR, mailing list owners should leave the decision to re-subscribe (or not) to the users of the list. This can be done by sending a mail to the old list (before it closes) telling people how to subscribe to the new list.

However, If list owners believe they should copy the membership from their old Informatics mailing list, they can go to:

to copy the membership of their existing mailing list (replacing 'LIST_NAME' with the name of their list).

They then can go to https://mlist.is.ed.ac.uk/lists/import/LIST_NAME and paste in the old membership.

If any of your members are outwith the University, then they will need register as an EASE Friend using the email they are subscribed to list on, if they want to change their subscription settings or or possibly access list archives.

To add new list administrators or owners, use their 'official' email address e.g. john.doe@ed.ac.uk, rather than jdoe@ed.ac.uk, or vice versa. The correct email to use is visible at the top right of the page when they're logged into the mailing list service.

4. Point the old list at the new list

If you would like the old @inf.ed.ac.uk mail address to remain active, we can point your old mailing list alias at your new list. This allows members to continue to send mail to the foo-list@inf.ed.ac.uk address.

If you'd like this to be done, please ask via the Computing Support form. For consistency, you can also set the reply-to to be the original @inf email address.

Last reviewed: 
12/08/2024