Mailing List Move to Google Groups

The Mailing Lists – Can Google save the day?

Introduction & Problem

Almost three years ago now I introduced the concept of using the Dark Brotherhood website to automatically update mailing lists for members. Based on the member’s position and unit, they are automatically subscribed and unsubscribed from different lists as the need arises. This change in the way we did things was quite necessary; perhaps the biggest reason for losing members was the lack of manual updates for the mailing lists. We used to do it all by hand, but the site removed that painful and dangerous task from us.

Over the last three years, we have become spoiled; we rely heavily on the mailing lists. It is to the point that when a single mail does not go through, many of us have no recourse for communication. The lists are essential to the operation of the club. As such, when we started to have problems with the GMail servers being blacklisted from the lists, members had a hard time getting their communications across. This was especially troublesome since GMail is quite popular with the Brotherhood leaders.

The problem arose due to my servers using a third-party system called SpamCop to make sure that emails sent to the [darkjedibrotherhood.com DB Website] were not spam. The system operates by receiving reports from members on what IP addresses are spamming. Unfortunately, GMail uses a small number of IP addresses for GMail, and some of those addresses were being reported for spam. SpamCop would blacklist those IPs for 24 hours for each violation, and our members were blocked if they were on that IP. Though I tried hard to find a way to solve the problem between the three parties to it, GMail, my host and SpamCop refused to fix the problem; they simply pointed the finger elsewhere.

Though the mailing lists have been good for the time, there have been some limitations. I am the only person that has access to see and control who is on the list; the clan leaders cannot ensure that their members are there. Some members have been accidentally unsubscribed, and we have not known about it until we lost them. Further, there is no way for members to go back and read old emails on the list like they would be able to on a major group website. Finally, my host has capped the number of mailing lists I can create, and we are at our limit.

As such, other solutions need to be explored.

Google Groups

Prior to using the domain’s mailing lists, most houses and clans relied on Yahoo! Groups for their mailing lists. Since then, Google has started their own service that can run off the ever-present GMail login accounts. Google Groups is a simple, reliable service for managing and archiving mailing lists; it offers both basic mailing list functionality and the ability to store and search mailing list content on the web. Unlike other free mailing list services, Google Groups offers generous storage limits and displays only relevant text ads (never banners or pop-up ads).

Google Groups offers a variety of services that I simply cannot offer. Some of them include: ability to set owners and managers of lists so leaders can manage groups, ability to see member list, ability to get mailings normally or through a daily digest fashion, archiving of old groups, conversation style posts like GMail, topic tracking through the star system, Google search through topics, ability to set access settings, advertising through the Google Groups system, interactivity with GMail, and unlimited lists.

The best part about Google Groups is that we can still subscribe and unsubscribe members through email. This however, requires a confirmation from the member who joins, and there is no way to track who denies confirmation but to manually check the member list. That is one disadvantage. The other two that are obvious to me are 1. the name is @googlegroups.com (which I will solve shortly) and 2. some of the list names have been taken already. To the latter, I have already secured all of the lists that are below:

AcclivisDraco	ACCStaff	Aleema	Archanis	Arcona
Byss	Caliburnus	Cestus	ChamberOfJustice	ClanTarentum
Dark Council	DarkBrotherhood	DarkJediBrotherhood	DarkSummit	DGMStaff
Dinaari	DorimadSol	DVStaff	Ektrosis	ExarKun
Galeres	Galthain	GMRG	GMStaff	HMStaff
Holocron	HouseBane	HouseGladius	HRLDStaff	Kirleta
Korriban	LudoKressh	MAAStaff	MarkaRagnos	NagaSadow
OriensObscurum	Plagueis	PrimusGoluud	Qel-Droma	SatalKeto
Scholae Palatinae	SCLStaff	Taldryan	Tridens	Ziost

The Bane, Gladius and Tarentum lists were taken. Thus, they have been given the House and Clan prefixes.

Finally, even if we choose to keep the current mailing lists, Google Groups has a service that they call “Remote Archive”. This lets us use the lists we have now, but use Google Groups as a viewable archive for them. This would take just as much setup time as moving though, most likely.

Google Hosted Domains

Google has released a service called Google Hosted Domains. This service allows for a person to re-route the mail that goes to their domain to Google’s servers. There, Google lets the user use the domain as a host for email addresses using the GMail backend. As such, I would be able to have JacCotelin@darkjedibrotherhood.com, but it would actually be hosted by Google and use a GMail account backend and interface. The service is invite-only to those that apply.

I have an invitation for darkjedibrotherhood.com.

Switching to Google Hosted Domains will allow two main things: I will be able to offer email addresses using the GMail backend that operate under darkjedibrotherhood.com and we will be able to make forwarding addresses that send email to the mailing lists. For example, Tarentum@darkjedibrotherhood.com would forward to clantarentum@googlegroups.com. As such, no one would even really need to remember that we were using Google Groups.

Analysis and Conclusion

There are several things that need to be weighed in order to really make a good decision:

Advantages:

1. No more blacklists at all
2. Clan leaders would be able to see who is on the list
3. Online archives of old email that members can go back and read when they join
4. Clan leaders get access to settings
5. Ability to add more lists (I can't currently)
6. More reliable (it's Google, after all)
7. Ability to give out GMail addresses with the djb.com domain
8. Much better web tools for the lists
9. Free djb.com advertising through Google groups

Disadvantages:

1. A good deal of Jac-time would need to go into reconfiguring the site – maybe 10 hours
2. Confirmation needed for subscriptions
3. Some of the list names are already taken (though that won’t matter for the fwds)
4. The lists are more public (though we can play with the view settings, we have to allow public subscriptions to the lists)
5. Both Google Groups and Google Hosted Domains are in BETA trials. Google Hosted Domains may eventually be a pay service (though I expect this is years down the road and there will probably be plenty of free stuff through it)
6. Google Ads on the list sites (though not on emails)

Based on an open look at the whole of the situation, I believe that the use of Google Groups in conjunction with Google Hosted Domains is our best option right now. We get a lot of functionality with Google Groups and get to retain our autonomy with Google Hosted Domains.