CLASS MAILING LIST

• Introduction

  The CS department sets up an electronic mailing list for each course. I require all students in my class to sign up in the first week. The purpose of such a list is to allow students, the teacher and TA's to to discuss or share information related to the class. For instance, I may send a message to correct something that I said in class, or to clarify an ambiguous homework problem. Below I will give some hints and instructions for using this mailing list.

• How to Join

  Starting in 2001, you can only join such lists by using a web browser. Before 2001, you could also join a mailing list by sending an email to ``majordomo.cs''. But this is no longer available. If you are reading this document using a web browser, you can go to your mailing list just by clicking the following URL: http://cs.nyu.edu/mailman/listinfo/.

• Names of Mailing lists

  The above URL lists all the available mailing lists. Some mailing lists may not have a description, so you may need to figure out the name of your mailing list. An example will clarify how the name is constructed. For the course G22.1170 taught in the Spring of 2001, the name of list is g22_1170_001_sp01. Note that the ``001'' designation refers to the section of the course (for courses that has only one section, the number ``001'' is implicit). For a course V22.0201.002 taught in the Fall of 2000, the name would be v22_0201_002_fa00.

• Example Only!

  I will use the name g22_1170_001_sp01 in our examples below. PLEASE DO NOT literally send emails to ``g22_1170_001_001_sp01@cs.nyu.edu'', etc.

• Sending Mail

  If you want to send e-mail to the entire mailing list, just send an e-mail message to g22_1170_001_sp01@cs.nyu.edu. If you are not on the mailing list, you may want to add your address to the cc line.

  To send e-mail to me only, send it to yap@cs.nyu.edu, not to the entire mailing list. Please, when you send me email, ALWAYS sign your name so I know who I am talking to!

  If you want to reply to the individual who sent a message via the mailing list, make sure you do not (accidentally) broadcast it to everyone to your possible embarassment. (In UNIX, the difference between replying to the sender and replying to every one in the email is sometimes the choice between typing `r' versus `R' but check which is which!)

• Common Mistake

  When you subscribe to any list, your full email address (e.g., yap@cs.nyu.edu) is used to identify you. Note that in this example, the machine "cs.nyu.edu" is part of my name). This means that if I try to send an email to the mailing list from a DIFFERENT machine, the system will not recognize that you are not a member of the list. So, if you expect to send emails from several machines, please subscribe as many times as necessary. In particular, if your email to the class list is rejected or deferred, it is probably for the above reason. Please note that my default action is to reject such emails, since I cannot afford to monitor all such requests. Also, I believe any email that is over 40K in size is deferred or rejected.

• Proper Use

  Please do not abuse this mailing list (e.g., it is not the place to advertise to sell something). Just before an exam, students sometimes flood the mailing list with a bunch of questions. Some of this may be appropriate but try to conserve bandwidth. If you ask me a question and I feel it is of general interest, I may broadcast the question and answer. (If you want to avoid this, be sure to tell me in advance).

• Unsubscribing, etc

  Various functions such as changing your password, unsubcribing from the list, etc, can be done at the URL for your list.