ResearcHers Email List: Frequently Asked Questions

This is the administrative FAQ for the ResearcHers mailing list. It was last updated August 29, 2007. Send comments to Her researchers-keeper@systers.org

TABLE OF CONTENTS

[1.0] Who is the ResearcHers community?
[1.1] Why aren’t students or management part of the ResearcHers community?
[1.2] How does the list compare with Systers and ProfessHers, as well as other lists for academic women?
[2.0] What are appropriate postings?
[2.1] What about job ads?
[2.2] What are the expectations regarding confidentiality?
[2.3] What about anonymous postings?
[3.0] How do I post a message to ResearcHers?
[3.1] How do I reply to a message sent to ResearcHers?
[4.0] How do I unsubscribe from ResearcHers?
[4.1] How do I temporarily turn ResearcHers mail off (”nomail”) or on?
[5.0] How do I continue getting ResearcHers mail when my email address changes?
[6.0] When I try to post to ResearcHers, it says I’m not a member. How do I fix that?
[7.0] What are ResearcHers conversations? How can I use them to see messages that are of interest to me?
[8.0] How do I access the ResearcHers archives?
[9.0] ResearcHers has been quiet lately. Is it me, or is the system down?

[1.0] Who is the ResearcHers community?

We are over 350 women computer science researchers from industry and government labs and academia. The list is international, with members from six continents. The list is limited to researchers (no students or managers).

[1.1] Why aren’t students or management part of the ResearcHers community?

ResearcHers focuses on issues of women and research. While both students and managers may face some of these issues (students as they begin research, managers as they direct research), ResearcHers is for women computer science researchers in their role as researchers. See also 1.2.

[1.2] How does the list compare with Systers and ProfessHers, as well as other lists for academic women?

Systers is a list for women in computer science and issues covered must be related to women and technology.  ProfessHers (http://www.cra-w.org/mailinglist/ProfessHers) is for women faculty to discuss issues related to their careers as academics and as women.  Topics include teaching, advising, research and research funding, committee work, and professional service.  There is some overlap between ProfessHers and ResearcHers.  The intent is that ProfessHers covers issues of a more strictly academic nature, while ResearcHers focuses more on issues arising from womens’ careers as researchers.  Eligible women are encouraged to join both lists (ResearcHers has been low volume and ProfessHers is expected to be as well).

There are also related mailing lists.  There are several sibling lists of interest to junior faculty women (http://www.cra-w.org/mailinglist/JrProfessHers), and for women seeking and starting PhD-level jobs (http://www.cra-w.org/mailinglist/PhdjobhuntHers).  Further information about these lists can be found at their web pages.  There is also the sisters-mentoring list (previously known as sisters-academia), a moderated mailing list of very limited traffic which provides mentoring to Ph.D. students and faculty members (particularly junior faculty) in computer science, computer engineering, or information technology;  see http://www.cra-w.org/mailinglist/Sisters/ for further information

[2.0] What are appropriate postings?

Postings should be about issues related to us as women and researchers.  If they only apply to a specific part of the world (e.g., scholarships for researcHers in Asia, CRA-W programs for researcHers in North America), please put that information *at the beginning* of your posting (this way members do not have to read all the way through to determine if they are eligible).

[2.1] What about job ads?

By members’ request, no job ads should be posted to ResearcHers. The one exception is ads for senior positions that would be of wide interest; it is probably best to pass such ads to the list moderator, researchers-keeper@systers.org

[2.2] What are the expectations re confidentiality?

Postings to the list are presumed to be confidential and are not to be forwarded without the explicit permission of the poster. The moderator will do what is possible to maintain list confidentiality (e.g., removing people from the list if she becomes aware that they have violated this confidentiality).  People shouldn’t trust mailing lists to be confidential. If an issue is very sensitive, it should be sent to the list moderator with a request that it be posted anonymously.

[2.3] What about anonymous postings?

The list moderator will do anonymous postings for list members; she is researchers-keeper@systers.org.  When a list member asks the moderator to post a message anonymously, the list moderator should work with the member to get an appropriately anonymized version of the message out to the list.

[3.0] How do I post a message to ResearcHers?

To post to ResearcHers, send mail to researchers+new@systers.org. If you get a reply saying ResearcHers does not recognize you as a member of ResearcHers, see Section [6].

[3.1] How do I reply to a message sent to ResearcHers?

You need to decide whether to reply to only the sender or to the sender and the list. If you use your mailer’s reply command, your message will go only to the sender. If you use Reply-all (sometimes called “Wide Reply”), it will go to the list.

You will notice that the reply to the list goes to something like researchers+topic@systers.org. Each conversation in ResearcHers is assigned a topic word, and individual ResearcHer can opt in and out of individual conversations. (See Section [7] for more information.) For that reason, please do NOT use Reply to start a new conversation. ResearcHers who were not interested in the previous conversation will not receive your message, and those who are not interested in your converation will have to receive all the responses sent to your conversation if they want to continue to receive messages sent about the previous conversation. Please use the conversation system as it was intended.

[4.0] How do I unsubscribe from ResearcHers?

To stop getting messages from ResearcHers, you can either remove yourself entirely or stay part of ResearcHers and turn off message delivery. The details are described below.

Option 1: Use the web to remove yourself from ResearcHers.

  1. Log on to researchers at http://www.systers.org/mailman/listinfo/researchers#subscribers. Enter the email address where you receive your ResearcHers mail in the text box at the very bottom of the page.
  2. Click on the “Unsubscribe or edit options” button to the right of the text box.
  3. On the next page, click the Unsubscribe button. You will be sent a confirmation email to the address where you receive your ResearcHers mail (to prevent someone from unsubscribing you without your knowledge). You are not unsubscribed until you respond to that email. Usually, just replying to the message is enough. Do it quickly — the confirmation code expires in a few days, and you will have to start over again.
  4. If you can no longer access the mail sent to the address where you receive ResearcHers mail, enter your password and click Login on this page. On the next page, you will see a section called “Unsubscribing from ResearcHers”. Check the box marked “Yes, I really want to unsubscribe” and then click on the Unsubscribe button. No confirmation will be required.
  5. If you can’t remember your password, and you can’t have it sent to you at the address where you receive your ResearcHers mail, send mail to userhelp@systers.org, explaining the situation and telling them your name and the email address where you believe your receive ResearcHers mail. We will manually unsubscribe you.

Option 2 : Change your profile via the web so that mail delivery is disabled. This is a good way to stop mail temporarily, e.g., when you go on vacation.

  1. Log on at http://www.systers.org/mailman/listinfo/researchers#subscribers. Enter the email address where you receive your ResearcHers mail in the text box at the very bottom of the page.
  2. Click on the “Unsubscribe or edit options” button to the right of the text box.
  3. On the next page, enter your password and click Login. If you have forgotten your password, click Remind to have a password reminder sent to you.
  4. On the next page, scroll down to the section called Your Subscription Options; the first one should be Mail Delivery. Check the Disabled radio button.
  5. Scroll down to the very bottom of the page, and click on the “Submit My Changes ” button.
  6. Don’t forget to reverse this process when you want to start getting ResearcHers mail again.

[4.1] How do I temporarily turn ResearcHers mail off (”nomail”) or on?

See option [2] in the previous section. (Just above this)

[5.0] How do I continue getting ResearcHers mail when my email address changes?

  1. Log on at http://www.systers.org/mailman/listinfo/researchers#subscribers

    2. Enter the email address where you receive your ResearcHers mail in the text box at the very bottom of the page.

  2. Click on the “Unsubscribe or edit options” button to the right of the text box.
  3. On the next page, enter your password and click Login. If you have forgotten your password, click Remind to have a password reminder sent to the email address where you receive your ResearcHers mail.
  4. Scroll down to the very bottom of the page to the “Changing your ResearcHers membership information” section. Enter your new email address in the text box next to “New address” and in the text box next to “Again to confirm”. Then click on the “Change My Address and Name” button.

[6.0] When I try to post to ResearcHers, it says I’m not a member. How do I fix that?

ResearcHers uses your email address to determine whether you are a ResearcHers member. If for some reason it is not recognizing your email address, it is most likely because you are posting from a different address than the email address where you receive your ResearcHers mail.

Option 1: Change your email address to the email address you are sending from

First, make sure that the return address in your email is exactly the same as the email address listed as your primary address in ResearcHers. Sometimes your mail client provides a slightly different outgoing address — e.g. name@cs.uni.edu and name@uni.edu may go to the same place, but Mailman won’t recognize them as the same. You may have to send yourself a message and check the From: line to find out exactly what return address you are sending out. If they disagree, you may want to change your primary address to be your outgoing address (see Section [5] for how to do this).

Option 2: Add additional email addresses that ResearcHers will recognize as you.

  1. Log on at http://www.systers.org/mailman/listinfo/researchers#subscribers. Enter the email adddress where you receive your ResearcHers mail in the text box at the very bottom of the page.
  2. Click on the “Unsubscribe or edit options” button to the right of the text box.
  3. On the next page, enter your password and click Login. If you have forgotten your password, click Remind to have a password reminder sent to you.
  4. On the next page, scroll down to the section called Your Subscription Options; the third item is “Other incoming email addresses”. Enter the new email addresses (beyond the current address you receive your ResearcHers mail) that ResearcHers should recognize as you. Be careful to make sure you have typed correctly - there is no test here to make sure you have a correct address.
  5. Scroll down to the very bottom of the page, and click on the “Submit My Changes ” button.

[7.0] What are ResearcHers conversations? How can I use them to see messages that are of interest to me?

You start a conversation in ResearcHers by sending mail to researchers+new@systers.org. This tells the system that your message is the beginning of a new conversation. In the ResearcHers system, you can be set up to see all messages in a conversation until you unsubscribe (the default) or to only see the first message in each new conversation until you subscribe to that conversation.

If you are set up to see all messages, when you encounter a conversation that no longer interests you, follow the link at the bottom of the message to be sent to an unsubscribe page. (You may have to enter your password, to ensure that it is you who is unsubscribing). This will unsubscribe you to this conversation only. If additional messages in this conversation were sent before you unsubscribed, you will find them in your inbox, but you will stop receiving future messages from this conversation.

If you are set up to see only the first message of any conversation, when you see a posting that interests you, follow the link at the bottom of the message to subscribe to the conversation. You may miss a few messages if they arrive before you subscribe, but you will see all future messages from this conversation.

[8.0] How do I access the ResearcHers archives?

The archives covers postings since 2004, and are organized by month. They aren’t really searchable; they must be browsed. This makes them of limited value (but we are looking for volunteers to help implement a better archive, based on the Google engine; send mail to researchers-keeper@systers.org to volunteer). That said, they are useful for browsing, and for catching up on recent postings you missed.

  1. Log on at http://www.systers.org/mailman/listinfo/researchers#subscribers. Enter the email address you receive your ResearcHers mail in the text box at the very bottom of the page.
  2. Click on the “Unsubscribe or edit options” button to the right of the text box.
  3. On the next page, enter your password and click Login. If you have forgotten your password, click Remind to have a password reminder sent to you.
  4. On the next page, click on the link to ResearcHers Archives (the 4th link from the top).
  5. On the resulting page, you will see a table of months. The Thread view is the most useful, as it will show all messages (for that month) in a single conversation together (a conversation may cross month boundaries, so you will need to view both months to see all the messages.), but other views can be useful for special purposes.
  6. Click on the View you want, and on the next page, click on the subject line for any message you want to see.

[9.0] ResearcHers has been quiet lately. Is it me, or is the system down?

ResearcHers tends to be a low-volume list, so if you haven’t heard from it in a while, that could well be because traffic is low. However, sometimes the system goes down.

See if you can get to www.systers.org. If you cannot, the system is definitely down. Send mail to susan.landau@sun.com, because, most likely systers.org email addresses are also down (you will have to remember this address, since you won’t be able to see this FAQ if the web site is down.)

If you can get to the site, but email to systers.org does not work, there should be something posted on the homepage about the outage and when we expect to be back up. If there is nothing there, most likely we don’t know the system is down. Send mail to susan.landau@sun.com to let us know.

Check the most recent archives (see Section [8]). If there are messages that you haven’t seen, something is wrong with your subscription. Log in to ResearcHers and see if any of your settings seem wrong. Check especially your email address and Mail Delivery options (see sections [4] and [5] for fixes.) If you can’t find anything wrong, send mail to userhelp@systers.org and ask for assistance.

Send mail to userhelp@systers.org and ask if there are system problems. If it bounces, send mail to susan.landau@sun.com. We will research the problem.