Society for Barefoot Living: E-mail technical details

As of 2003/5/4, we are asking members to send list submissions to sbl-list@barefooters.org; submissions sent to the old address (dss-list@yahoogroups.com) will be bounced starting 2003/5/11.

What's this all about?

We're actually making two changes, nearly simultaneously. The first change, effective immediately, is that email forwarding has been set up from the barefooters.org email server to the Yahoo! Groups list server at yahoogroups.com. This works for all of the SBL mailing lists:

The main SBL mailing list sbl-list@barefooters.org
forwards to dss-list@yahoogroups.com
The SBL membership committee mailing list sbl-apply@barefooters.org
forwards to dss-apply@yahoogroups.com
The SBL management mailing list sbl-consult@barefooters.org
forwards to dss-consult@yahoogroups.com
The SBL moderators mailing list sbl-mod@barefooters.org
forwards to sbl-mod@yahoogroups.com
The SBL sub-list regarding public access bf-access@barefooters.org
forwards to BF-access@yahoogroups.com
The SBL steering committee mailing list bf-plans@barefooters.org
forwards to BF-plans@yahoogroups.com

Furthermore, there are seven "commands" you can append to each of the above list names; these also get forwarded to the corresponding address at yahoogroups. Using BF-plans as an example, you can send email to:

bf-plans-owner@barefooters.org to reach the owner of the list
bf-plans-nomail@barefooters.org to halt the delivery of list messages
bf-plans-digest@barefooters.org to receive list messages in digest form
bf-plans-normal@barefooters.org to receive list messages individually
bf-plans-subscribe@barefooters.org to request a subscription to list
bf-plans-unsubscribe@barefooters.org to unsubscribe from the list
bf-plans-help@barefooters.org to receive a generic help message about the list

This change brings the email list addresses into the same domain as the Society's website. This gives us the flexibility to change to a different underlying list server at a future date without requiring everyone to update their address books yet again.

The second change, taking place on 2003/5/11, is that some of the actual groups at Yahoo will be renamed:

The main SBL mailing list dss-list becomes sbl-list
The SBL membership committee mailing list dss-apply becomes sbl-apply
The SBL management mailing list dss-consult becomes sbl-consult
The SBL moderators mailing list
(already done on 2003/5/2)
dss-mod becomes sbl-mod

This brings the group names into sync with the Society's name change back in 2001. This couldn't be done earlier because of technical issues with Yahoo! Groups.

Note that the BF-... group names remain the same.

What's the timing of all of this?

All of the ...@barefooters.org addresses are working immediately, and will continue to work through the name changes at Yahoo! Groups.

All of the dss-...@yahoogroups.com addresses are working now, but will stop working as of 2003/5/11 (except for dss-mod which has already been changed as a test case). After that date, email sent to those addresses will bounce.

All of the sbl-...@yahoogroups.com addresses will start working on 2003/5/11. Email sent directly to those addresses prior to that date will bounce.

Why does the address sbl-list@yahoogroups.com show up in my replies to list messages?

This is one aspect of the list manager at Yahoo! Groups that we have no control over, and will undoubtedly be a source of confusion.

The answer is, don't worry about it. The fact is that mail to sbl-list@barefooters.org and mail to sbl-list@yahoogroups.com both end up in the same place. So even though you're using the former address for new messages to the list, it's perfectly fine to use the latter address for replies.


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Last updated: May 6, 2003