Frequently Asked Questions

Usage Guidelines

1. Use the smallest list that suits your purpose: don't automatically use the full department mailing list when a smaller list will do. Notices about quasi-convex-11-dimension-Riemann-surfaces shouldn't be sent to staff as they are only interested in 12-dimension cases; limit it to faculty, graduates, and perhaps, visitors.

2. Use discretion: ask yourself whether you should inform everybody about your latest exploits at the baseball park. People will start to habitually delete mail from people who send drivel.

3. Remove extraneous information: when forwarding Email, trim off non-essential parts like signatures, Email headers and irrelevant text.

4. Please consider the folowing when attaching data:

   • Why is the practice of Emailing attachments using proprietary formats (such as MS Word) discouraged?
   • Why is the practice of Emailing large attachments to many recipients discouraged?

5. Our internal department mailing lists will only be accepted from within the campus networks. In particular, you will not be able to submit messages from any free public Email provider (e.g. GMail, Hotmail, etc.), nor from another University or your ISP's mail account. You may, however, our webmail facility or authenticated mail service can send mail to these lists.

Mailing List Organization

Add @math.ubc.ca to these names for the complete Email address.

			      department
				  |
				  |
	      +---------+---------+---------+---------+
	      |         |         |         |         |
	   faculty   emeritus   staff   graduates  visitor
	      |                                       |
	      +------+------+------+        +---------+
	      |      |      |      |        |         |
	     prof  assist assoc  inst     misc     postdocs
				   |                  |
			    +------+        +---------+
			    |      |        |         |
			 jrinst srinst     pdf     resassoc

• assist: assistant professors
• assoc: associate professors
• emeritus: professors emeritii
• graduates: graduate students
• jrinst: junior instructors (untenured)
• misc: those who don't fit anywhere else
• pdf: postdoctoral fellows
• prof: full professors
• resassoc: research associates
• srinst: senior instructors (tenured)
• staff: department staff

These lists are composed of common collections of the above mailing lists:

• faculty: all active professors, instructors
• inst: all instructors
• postdocs: all PDFs, RAs
• visitor: all PDFs, RAs and guests
• department: all of the above

In addition to these mailing lists, there are various ad hoc internal mailing lists for special purposes. Please contact the IT staff about using one of these lists, or if you want to create a new one.