Mailing Lists

Recognizing the importance of electronic communication to the functioning of the institute, IIT Mandi has established a mailing list policy that outlines appropriate uses for mailing lists for the timely dissemination of information relevant to various groups and yet to protect its faculty, students, and staff from mailbox clutter caused by unwanted or unsolicited large-scale e-mailings. This policy applies to all emails sent though the institute mail-servers to all parts of IIT Mandi for large-scale e-mailings directed to its faculty, students, and staff.
Posting to mailing lists is intended where the message is of common interest to the members of the list but is difficult to convey via individual emails or other means.
Guidelines:

1. There should be a few “official” lists to communicate important official information to their members. The members are subscribed to these lists by default when they join the institute and unsubscribed when they leave the institute. The members cannot opt out of these lists.
2. A few mailing lists are maintained to communicate information related to specific interests. The members may be subscribed to these lists by default when they join the institute. However, as the participation in these lists is voluntary and based on interest of the members, the members may opt out of these lists if they do not want to receive information related to these lists.
3. Use of mailing lists is discouraged as much as possible, except in the situations where some official information needs to be shared with a large section of the institute community.
4. Being a member of a mailing list does not give a right to post to that mailing list by default. Only the designated members (explicitly whitelisted members) of a mailing list are allowed to post to the list.
5. All aspects of the content and formatting of the message are the sole responsibility of the sender(s) of the group e-mail.
6. Posts to mailing lists should be sent, preferably, in plain text only. HTML, Rich Text Format, etc may not be supported due to the differing capabilities of e-mail clients and their storage requirements. If there is a need to share an attachment, then such attachments must be uploaded on some shared public folder, say on the institute cloud, as a (zipped) file and a link to that file must be shared via the posts. Similarly, if there is a need to share a more graphical display of information, then such information can be put on a webpage and a link to that webpage can be included in the mailing list post.
7. Posts to mailing lists in conflict with the institute regulations or applicable laws (chain letters, etc.) are not permitted.
8. Posts to all mailing lists will be accompanied by the following disclaimer:
   This email may contain confidential and/or legally privileged information and is meantfortheintendedrecipient(s)only.Ifyouhavereceivedthisemailinerrorandarenottheintendedrecipient/s,kindly inform thesenderanddelete thisemailimmediatelyfrom your system. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, dissemination, forwarding,printing, or copying of this email or any action taken in reliance on this email bypersons or entities other than the intended recipient is strictly prohibited and may beunlawful.
9. The table below provides an indicative list of mailing lists, their respective target groups, posting permissions, and purposes, etc. More such lists may be created/deleted from time to time based on need, justification, and approval of the corresponding office. For example, to create any new (or delete an existing) mailing list involving students, a permission from the Dean(Student Affairs) office may be required.
10. At the beginning of every semester, course-specific mailing lists will be created for each course offered in that semester based on the course registration data provided by the office of Dean(academics). These mailing lists will be automatically deleted at the start of the next semester.
11. Violations of this policy may be referred to the appropriate offices for enforcement under existing institute procedures.
12. To request WING’s assistance in creating/deleting a mailing list, posting to a mailing list, for reporting or responding to a violation, more information, and to express questions or comments about this policy, please email to: mailing-lists@iitmandi.ac.in.
13. An advisory committee may be constituted to address requests to create/modify/maintain/delete mailing lists.