Two types of email lists

We use both announcement lists and discussion lists to share information in our community.

Announcement lists

The name, announcement list, tells you that it is for announcing things. It offers a one-way flow of information from leaders to the subscribers. Our main announcement list is the e-News which we use to send out our quarterly newsletter, The CommUUnicator, and our weekly bulletin, This Week at EUUC. A few committees use announcement lists to reach people who have signed up to receive information about their specific program, such as Meaningful Movies.

Discussion lists

Our committees and interest groups that are larger than about ten members use discussion lists to communicate with their members. Any subscriber to a discussion list may email the list and reach all the other subscribers. There are a few important advantages to using discussion lists:

  • The list contains everyone’s up-to-date email addresses, so when someone changes their email address, it only needs to be updated in one place rather than in every member’s email application.
  • List members can read the archived messages.
  • People can unsubscribe themselves.
  • List members can see and manage all their lists (announcement and discussion lists) in one place.
  • Non-members will not be able to send messages to the list. (Clearly, this is sometimes a disadvantage.)