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Email Lists

@rvuuf.org hosts a number of email addresses & lists to facilitate church communication. Some @rvuuf.org addresses are for individual roles; others are for announcements, committees and interest groups. A group address may sometimes be referred to generically as a "listserv" (though we are not actually using LISTSERV (brand) software).

Why use a rvuuf.org address? When someone's email address or ISP changes, or someone takes over a new role, or the membership in a group changes, these changes are stored centrally, once -- so that you don't have to remember who is currently in a role or in a group, or update your own email program's address book.

Where can I find a list of @rvuuf.org addresses? current list [updated: 17-Dec-2011]; any recent Member&Friend printed directory contains a listing inside the cover.

How do I contact the Email Administrator to change an email address, be added/removed from a list, ask questions, provide feedback, report problems, create a new list, make a list public vs. announce-only vs. member-only, etc.? See: mailadmin or Contact: Email Administrator; our Office Admin may need to verify your status when being added to a committee; new lists, esp. for discussion topics, will need to conform to our Email Policy (see below).

Who can send to a rvuuf.org address? Usually anyone (even outside RVUUF) can send email to our individual and group addresses. However, in the future, there could be special lists with just a few authorized senders:

  • announce: important/urgent church-wide announcements sent to all Members&Friends
  • announce2: for other misc. RVUUF announcements; you may choose not to receive these additional messages (i.e., opt-out) by contacting mailadmin
  • a working or interest group could be configured so that only members of the group could send messages to the group

Why don't we publish email addresses directly in web pages, like john.doe @rvuuf.org? These embedded visible addresses are very easy for spammers to scan and harvest automatically, despite techniques intended to "obfuscate" addresses. We have chosen to list addresses elsewhere, and you can use the Contact Us form, available at the top of every web page; select Web Admin (there) to request that your role be listed as a contact "Category", e.g., "SomeCommittee Chair" (with your email address hidden).

Could we offer addresses for individuals and non-RVUUF interest groups, e.g., john.doe @rvuuf.org, bungee.jumping @rvuuf.org, etc.? Supporting individual email accounts and/or various group addresses may be technically possible, but that would increase the demands on our limited support staff (and mail server) -- plus we need to clarify church-related usage in our Email Policy.

Should a RVUUFian have his/her own email address? Yes. Although some RVUUFians share an email address with a partner/family, it would be best if each individual had his/her own separate email address -- this could reduce confusion in sharing an Inbox (e.g., user1 deletes messages intended for user2), maintain more confidentiality, reduce likelihood of a full Inbox when away, and in the future, enable more fine-tuned web login on rvuuf.org to access more sensitive documents & info (each user corresponds to a unique email address, with certain roles & permissions). You can obtain an additional email address from your ISP account provider (usually), and from free services such as Yahoo, Google, AOL, MSN, etc. (Whether to use web-based "webmail" or to configure your email client application to handle multiple email accounts will be left for you and/or your tech support guru to decide).

What is our email policy? Our email policy & guidelines (current RVUUF policy) will be updated and formalized as part of a more clear, comprehensive, and consistent RVUUF Communication Policy that could cover all internal & external communications involving different media & purposes -- email announcements & discussions, all forms of static & interactive web site content, print (flyers, newsletters, Order of Service inserts), radio & podcasts, TV & videos, advertisements, public presentations, .... Stay tuned. Volunteer for the Communication Committee.

How are our email lists implemented? We are currently using Google Apps, which is handy especially if you have your own domain and are a non-profit. With fewer lists (or a different host), we might have used MailMan; we also considered forwarding group addresses to Google Groups. As noted earlier, we are not using "LISTSERV".

What's next? In addition to maintaining current email groups and adding other relevant interest groups, and creating a Communication Policy, we plan to explore other ways to facilitate discussion, e.g., forums where email could be used to post content & send notifications about new items, but the discussion itself would be organized & archived on the web site (email is not really the best medium to facilitate long or complex discussions esp. involving file attachments).

Questions? mailadmin [Contact: Email Administrator]