TheSWILAnnouncements List

Proposal for announcements at swil.org

This will be an extremely low-traffic, moderated email list for the purpose of circulating major announcements to the extended Swarthmore Warders of Imaginative Literature community. It is intended to be applicable to a range of people, from current students, to alumni quite active in SWIL, to those who don't really keep up with SWIL anymore but would like to know about major happenings.

~~ List Guidelines ~~

  1. Content
    1. What should be on the list
      1. An annual Year in Review/Year in Preview email
        1. Sent by the new presidents, introducing themselves
        2. Recaps major SWIL occurrences of the past year
        3. Includes an overview of the SWIL website, particularly the mailing lists page and SFDT page (if active)
      2. Big things, of interest to current students and alumni, that people might forget about or not hear about. These should not already have an easy and complete means of announcement. For example:
        1. Reunions
          1. The date of the next major reunion, when it's chosen
          2. A reminder about the annual mini-reunions during Alumni Weekend
        2. Vacations (eg, the cruise)
        3. New mailing lists (eg, the regional Fun lists)
        4. Major changes to existing mailing lists (eg, after 2.5 years, SFDT starts discussing books!)
        5. Major institutional changes (eg, the construction of Castle SWIL where the Courtney Smith house used to be)
        6. Major Swarthmore changes (eg, demolishing Bond to make room for a new hyperspace bypass)
      3. What list to join if you want to discuss one of these topics further, and how to join that list
        1. No exceptions -- this must always be included
        2. Include explicit majordomo instructions
      4. A link to www.swil.org at the bottom of each email
    2. What should not happen on the list
      1. Discussion
      2. Things that happen periodically and predictably, and are well-advertised, so that interested people can find out about them by asking around or checking the web site. For example:
        1. SFDT book of the month
        2. SWILNews
        3. The Pterodactyl Hunt
        4. PhilCon
      3. Things best handled elsewhere. For example:
        1. Finding new SWAPA OEs is best handled in SWAPA

  2. How people join the list
    1. Initial population
      1. Send a special email to all lists at swil.org, swat90, swat00, and the SWILNews list
      2. Encourage people to forward the announcement to people not on any lists who might be interested
      3. Have people subscribe themselves
        1. This way we don't have problems with people using different email addresses on different lists
    2. The future
      1. Send an email to the freshmen sometime relatively late in the fall semester
        1. If it is sent early, people may subscribe who don't really care (not too much of an issue since it's low traffic)
        2. If it is sent later, it streamlines the process of alerting frosh who don't sign up for SWIL at the Activities Fair (quite a few this year)
        3. Shy but very-SWIL frosh may be more likely to sign up for it later in the semester
        4. They won't really miss anything by not being on it in their first two months

  3. Moderating the list
    1. Moderation is by the current presidents
      1. There are more than one of them, so no problems arise if someone goes on vacation
      2. Current students will have a better feel for what is a "major institutional change"
      3. Recommendation: at least one president should be on the Chat list
    2. How they do it
      1. They follow the instructions here