Listserv Reopened; Listserv FAQs

At the request of our Class’ leaders, the AYA has allowed us to add new members to the Class of 1969 Listserv. Until now, it’s been closed to new subscribers.

The Listserv is a group email system whereby members can send a single email to one email address, i.e., y1969-l@ayalists.yale.edu.  The Listserv will copy it and send individual messages to all the other members.

How Do I Join?

The Listserv is an opt-in system.  To join, send an email from the email account that you want to use for Yale 1969 business to y1969-l-subscribe@ayalists.yale.edu and request access to the Class of 1969 list.  Include your name, college and year — 1969 if you are reading this!  Note that the character following the “y1969-” is an “L”, not a “1” or an “I”.   And, like all email addresses, it’s not case-sensitive.

The AYA will verify that you are affiliated with our class, regardless of when or if you actually graduated.  Within 1 business day, they will send back a confirming email.  (If missing, check your spam folder!)   It looks like this:

We have received a request from youremail@yourdomain.com for subscription of your email address, “youremail@yourdomain.com”, to the y1969-l@ayalists.yale.edu mailing list. To confirm that you want to be added to this mailing list, simply reply to this message, keeping the Subject: header intact. Or visit this web page:

https://ayalists.yale.edu/mailman/confirm/y2001-l/[some-wildass-random-number-string]

Just “reply” without changing the Subject line and, voilà! — you are now able to use the Listserv and will get copies of messages from it.

What Do I Use It For?

Short answer: anything of broad interest to the class.

Longer answer: Because every email will go to every member of the List, you’ll want to be judicious in both frequency of use and content.

If you become a conversation hog, you’ll be imposing pretty dramatically on hundreds of Classmates’ time.  And using the Listserv to do purely personal work, e.g., fundraising for your favorite charity or proselytizing for religious or partisan-political purposes, is generally unwelcome.

That said, feel free to use it for items like announcing the publication of a new book, highlighting some major personal milestone (major honor, new grandchild, etc.) or requesting input about something where members of the Class might have a unique ability to help — all those purposes would be good candidates for the Listserv.  Anything of broad interest to the Class is certainly welcome.

How Do I Use It?

Simple: Just send an email from the email account you used to subscribe to y1969-l@ayalists.yale.edu.  Again, the character following the hyphen is an “L” not a “1” or an “I”.

In order to avoid malware and other security risks, Yale has configured the Listserv to strip off any attached files, including pictures.  It does allow links, phone numbers and email addresses though.  So, if you want to circulate a picture, either host it somewhere and link to it, or send it to us at support@Yale1969.org, and we’ll help you.

Two Important Tips To Keep You Sane

The Listserv is very easy to use and super-useful, even if a bit old-fashioned and geeky.  But there are two things to know:

a) “REPLY” is actually “REPLY TO ALL”.   When the Listserv sends you a message from a Classmate, e.g., Dan Seiver asking for some information about a recent decedent, the “from” address will say “Dan Seiver” and then some gobbledygook about ayalists.yale.edu as a service or a gateway or something.

You’ll be tempted to “reply” thinking that your reply will go to Dan alone.  Wrong!  If you look in the “To” field of your draft reply, you’ll see that the message is addressed to y1969-l@ayalists.yale.edu … the full list!  It’s very common that somebody replies with a message intended for private consumption by the original sender, only to have it go to the whole list; this has led to some embarrassment, as you can imagine. 😉

If, in the example above, you want your message to go to Dan alone, you’ll need to “reply” but copy/paste Dan’s email address from the original message into the TO field of your draft reply, replacing the y1969-l@ayalists.yale.edu address with Dan’s address.  It’s a slight hassle, but that works if you want to be private.  I should say somewhat private since nothing you send on the Internet is ever truly private!

Now, most of the time “Reply to All” is what you want.  E.g., if the Reunion Co-chairs ask for input on some element of the program, replying with your thoughts so that everyone can see … and comment further … well, that’s why they call Listservs a type of group discussion software.  The default behavior is for broad, group distribution.

Now … when there are LOTS of responses, that leads to the second tip:

b)  Daily Digest.   By default, you’ll get an email every time there’s a new message.  Sometimes there is some hot topic that generates a lot of discussion and many replies; this is rare, but it does happen.  In that case, you’ll get a flurry of messages in your inbox.  And that can get annoying.

If you want, you can set your Listserv account to “enable digest,” after which you’ll get only get ONE email per day, summarizing all the messages sent that day.  To “enable digest” just click on https://ayalists.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/y1969-l, which appears at the bottom of EVERY message sent by the Listserv.  Put your email address in the last box and click the button that says, inartfully, “Unsubscribe or Edit Options” … in order to edit your options!  Don’t worry, you won’t be unsubscribed unless you fill that out part on the “edit options” page!   Just follow the instructions and turn “enable digest” ON.  QED.

Do NOT Suffer In Silence!

If you need any help with any part of this, feel free to reach out to us via the contact form or support@Yale1969.org.  We are happy to help.