Hello PBuro,

After attending last night's meeting, I re

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I. First I will detail the 5 aliases we use to communicate with our general membership.

II. Then I will detail the 5 aliases we use to talk to hosers/officers/politburo.

III. Finally, I will detail numerous aliases that students, companies, and the cs community use to communicate with us.

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Here is a key/legend for understanding what I write:

n) alias-name -- short description not written by sam

alias-name w/ more details below

• use(s)

• who email currently goes to aka intended audience (double check please vptech!!!)

✓ why it's important

✓ why it was created/intended use

✗ problem(s) with alias

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I. There are 4 aliases that members are automatically added to:

1) announce -- mandatory membership, only officers post, only has "most important" announcements e.g. GM, pburo changes, club charter amendments…

Announce

• Send an email to announce that contains important club announcements relating to our constitution, e.g. amendment proposals, meeting minutes, and (up for debate) general meetings.

• Intended audience is all members-- all members, ever.

✓ This alias is important because even really old members read our minutes and like to know that cogs are running and gears are turning. If you want proof that minutes are to be sent out to announce, try sending an email to [minutes@csua.berkeley.edu]{.underline}. It redirects to announce.

✗ A lot of people who don't care put these announcements into their 'mark read' folders without reading them. That's okay though. If they want to later, they can search through the pile.

2) csua -- optional membership, open posting for members, "general chat" mail list (no one uses this anymore)

3) csua-newmembers -- optional membership, only officers post, has members that joined in the last semester or two to try to reach out to them especially for things like ice cream socials (no one used this for many years when it was rediscovered)

CSUA-newmembers

• Send an email to csua-newmembers to advertise things that are more relevant to new members than anyone else, such as ice cream socials, unix helpsessions, etc. I've been sending all upcoming events including GMs to this email; I'll eplain why below (it's the best current option).

• Intended audience is new members who have joined in the last year or two.

✓ Important because some people consider events/advertising spam, and they should be able to opt out while still getting the important constitution-related announcements, such as whether we're disbanding or not.

✓ We never take anyone off; they can leave if it's no longer relevant to them.

✓ This is better for events than announce, although you may send GMs to announce if you like, since our constitution requires they be publicly announced at least 1 week prior to their date.

Upcoming-Events

• This email alias exists but is useless.

• Intended audience: non-members interested in potentially joining or at least coming to our public events.

✗ When a member account is created, he/she is not added to this mailing list. So It only contains people you add manually.

✓ Why add people manually? They're not ready to commit to joining yet but do want on our events mailing list; it's easy to get a list of emails/you dont need an add script to c/p emails into mailman.

✗ Should a prospective interested person later added to this mailing list later join the club officially, they start receiving emails twice, which is extremely annoying.

✓ Solution: don't use upcoming-events. Add proactive interested members to csua-newmembers instead. Alternate Solution: rename csua-newmembers. Another solution: write a convoluted script.

4) jobs -- optional membership, only officers post, has job listings that come with the politburo stamp of approval. we don't want our members juked into being an accidental technical cofounder for the next facebook! (typically indrel manages and posts to jobs, but the last 2 indrels...ignored this fact) =(

There is a 5th alias that we need to update so that it works properly:

5) alumni -- optional membership, only has csua alumni; sends announcements for alumni-centric events, such as alumni BBQ.

✗ currently no one gets added to this mailing list, and most of our alumni aren't on it! vp, please come up with a way to appx when members graduate and automatically add them! it doesn't have to be perfect. there's an api released for berkeley now! ;D

Alumni

• Send an email to alumni to let them know of things that concern only them. Examples include Alumni BBQ, networking events, etc.

• Intended audience is alumni.

✓ This alias is important because most alumni have announce filtered into a closet to rot, but we still want them to know about things that concern them!

✗ We do not distinguish between members who have graduated or are still current students, so there is no way to prevent current students from being put on this mailing list and setting up a trash filter because it doesn't apply to them. =(

II. The 5 aliases we use to talk to hosers/officers/politburo.

1) politburo, pb, excomm -- for communication amongst politburo members, for planning. who is on politburo? current politburo and shadows. shadows are 1-2 alumni who sit around and only pop their heads in if shit is really weird. Lately we’ve been keeping last semester politburo on during a transitional period, which lasts a random amount of time.

2) politburo-current, pb-current -- for current politburo only. this was created so we could discuss as a group the removal of a particular shadow who was replying to every single politburo email and not behaving in the spirit of a shadow. generally use of this alias is not recommended-- shadows are extremely useful.

3) officers -- for important announcements that concern club officers, such as volunteering, classroom announcing, etc. officers need to be on this email and cannot opt out.

4) officers-current -- i’m not sure why we have this, since regular officers@csua should only have current officers. I guess it’s for if we ever get lazy about taking former officers off the list?

5) office-hosers -- for internal event announcements. intended audience is officers, hosers, and former officers, former hosers. this is an ‘online community’ full of joy and joyness and social camaraderie.

If these names seem silly to you, read our definition of terms:

Politburo:

We are the politburo because our faculty sponsor for many years is a registered member of the communist party. Brian Harvey, who is retiring at the end of Spring 2013, is the best faculty sponsor ever. Super chill. Inexplicably, it is still illegal for communists to be school teachers in California.

Hosership:

Hosers are called hosers because they hose. As a hoser, you are "one of us," you are in the "in" club. You are invited to hardly publicized internal events. You provide culture and community, can play games while an officer is in the office, don't have to help out with events or food sales, and are encouraged to hose.

Officership:

As an officer, you get all of the leadership emails. You get the power. You get all the help you need to get things done in this club. We renamed politburo meetings to officer meetings or csua planning meetings to encourage officer and even hoser participation.

But with great power comes great responsibility:

  • Help with 2 Events:

    • You are in charge of set up, clean up, or running/executing at least 2 events during the semester of your officership.

  • Man the Office:

    • You are in charge of helping keep the office open, safe for all members, and for collecting money from the sells.

  • What you Get In Return:

    • politburo@csua.berkeley.edu is extended to officers (opt-in)

    • tab

    • 24/7 access

    • honor

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Purpose of distinction, told from two points of views:

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We didn’t have officers before; it was politburo and hosers. This led to politburo doing all of the work, and the hosers hosing. We require a substantial amount of the human element to set up, take down, and advertise events, in addition to keeping our office open, and created officership to fill this gap. If hosers wanted perks, they were going to have to start giving back or just plain contributing to the running of the club.

III. The numerous aliases that students, companies, and the cs community use to communicate with politburo.

Events

• Send an email to events if (a) you are a company looking to hold/sponsor an event with us, or, (b) you are a student with an internal event idea and want CSUA's help/funding to make it happen.

• Intended audience is at least politburo, possibly all officers too.

✓ This alias is called 'events' because companies try to send emails to events and will always try to send emails to events.

✗ No member has ever sent us an event idea-- I don't think we're advertising the fact that one of the services we provide is helping sponsor fledgling member-inspired social or technical events.

✗ I'm not sure but there may be an event-ideas alias for the student idea; check with vp-tech.

Root

• Members email root for password resets or account troubleshooting. Root are the guys&gals who know how our servers work and can fix things when they break.

✗ Root is mostly alumni at this point. =(

For a list of all aliases, ssh into mail.csua.berkeley.edu and open /etc/aliases

fin.