Hi Oliver,
A similar point was raised on the Academic Women email list. I’ll share my response here for this community, as I share your frustration!
Within our Biophysics sub-group (and more broadly), we are also finding this an infuriating policy change, with very little advance notice or support. We maintain an active Biophysics email list with over 150
members from within SFU and beyond. Any members can send to the list, to update each other on local seminars and workshops, conferences, job positions, funding opportunities, etc. After discussions with our departmental IT support person, and the communications
people tasked by SFU IT with handling our inquiries, we have decided to migrate our mail list to a google email group. This seems to be the only way to manage the types of communications our list is meant to provide.
I would be happy to add my name to a list of people frustrated and inconvenienced with this decision, but given recent trends, I can’t see that SFU will change anything about their policy in response to our protests.
What might happen is SFU IT attempts to set up some logistical work-around that ends up performing far worse than a google group and takes inordinate time, cost, and training to set up. So, we’re bailing on SFU and moving to google.
Cheers,
Nancy
--
Nancy Forde [she/her/hers]
Professor | Department of Physics
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Dr.
Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6
--
nforde@sfu.ca |
http://www.sfu.ca/fordelab
From: Oliver Schulte <oschulte@cs.sfu.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2024 11:59 AM
To: academic-discussion <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
Cc: cs-faculty <cs-faculty@sfu.ca>
Subject: Fwd: Important update: Maillist changes in effect by February 1, 2024
Hi all,
I wonder if anyone else is concerned about the upcoming removal of external recipients from our mailing lists. (Feb 1 this year, details below). Mail lists allow SFU faculty, departments, and other users to reach
many users, including external users, both at SFU and outside SFU.
While SFU ITS wants to stop us from using maillists with external recipients,
UBC supports this service.
Users (internal or external to UBC) are able to manage their own subscriptions through the web dashboard....All active Staff and Faculty can sponsor the creation of new mailing lists with the use of a FASmail account
I believe it is important that SFU match the email services that UBC offers to its users.
What a UBC user can do with email, an SFU user should be able to do also.
UBC is not the only peer institution that offers maillists with external recipients. You also have this capability if you work at UVic, U of Toronto, and the U of Alberta. In fact I would expect that SFU is the
only Canadian university that does not want to offer its users this basic functionality (but I have not checked every other university).
Nor are outgoing maillists the only email service SFU ITS wants to take away.
As I see it, SFU faculty have done well in competing in teaching and research on a national level. This will be made more difficult if we have worse IT support for basic communication and productivity functions.
Regards,
Oliver
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: IT Services <itsinfo@sfu.ca>
Date: Tue, Jan 2, 2024 at 10:02 AM
Subject: Important update: Maillist changes in effect by February 1, 2024
To: its-external-maillist-managers@sfu.ca <its-external-maillist-managers@sfu.ca>
SFU Maillist users,
In the new year, SFU will be activating strict email protocols to comply with new industry-wide email regulations set by external email providers.
In February 2024,
Google and
Yahoo! will introduce changes to help combat spam and phishing attacks. It is expected many other email providers
will make similar changes to their email practices and large organizations like SFU will need to make changes to comply with these new regulations. These necessary updates to our email protocols will ensure that SFU emails continue to be received by other
email services.
The change: SFU Maillists will be restricted to sending to SFU email addresses only. Starting February
1, 2024, non-SFU email accounts will not receive emails from SFU Maillists.
The impact: Maillist owners and managers are encouraged to update their lists.
A separate message will be sent by the beginning of the year listing each of your maillists that contains at least one non-SFU address.
Updating lists: Log in to the SFU Maillist application (https://maillist.sfu.ca).
Select a list you own or manage and view the “Maillist members” tab. For any address in the list that does not end with “sfu.ca”, either uncheck the “Deliver To User” checkbox or click the trashcan icon to delete
the entry altogether. Click “Save Changes” when you have unselected or deleted all external members. You can check and update your lists anytime to address necessary changes.
Note: If you wish to keep a copy of the membership before making changes, use the “Download addresses to file” button to save a copy of the email addresses to a file on your computer.
Support: Please submit a ticket to IT
ServiceHub if you need help or support with this change.
Thank you,
SFU IT Services