Mac Ministry List

The Mac Ministry List was created to help Mac-using missionaries who had little access to technical support. Over the years, it has grown into CMUG’s online community forum. Join the conversation by subscribing.

At this moment there are currently two Mac Ministry mailing lists. As of December 29, 2010, the new list is the recommended list to join, and to write to with effect from January 8, 2011. The transition announcement below envisaged that by January 10, 2011 members would cease to use the old list. However, this is currently being actively discussed on the old list.

Mac Ministry via mac-min.org

This is the new list. To subscribe and receive individual emails or digests, visit the mailman management page. From here you can subscribe to the list, unsubscribe from the list, and change certain options such as whether to receive messages in regular mode or digest mode.

As mentioned at the foot of that page, there is also a separate list for administrative matters, to save stuff of a boring or technical nature from being sent to all members.

Mac Ministry via macministry.org (may shortly become defunct)

If all members join the new list, then from January 10, 2011 we expect that there will be no more messages on the old list. In that case, from that date members can safely unsubscribe from this list and use the new list exclusively. This will ensure that you receive all of the messages, and others will receive your messages in the right place.

To unsubscribe from the old list, click this link and send the e-mail it creates.

Archives

There are no online email archives of the old or new lists. This is intentional, and preferred by a significant number of CMUG members. Instead, this Wiki was set up partly to serve as a repository of some of the best advice which may be of lasting or wider value.

Transition Announcement

The transition announcement in its entirety is as follows:

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Dear Mac-Minners,

We hope you all had a Merry/Happy Christmas. The Mac-Min Admin team would like to announce a Christmas present to the entire Mac-Min community! We're delivering a shiny new email list… well, not quite in time for Christmas, but just in time to bring in the New Year.

As many of you are all too aware, the number of list software failures has increased over the past few months, meaning that more and more of you are missing out on important discussions. Compounding this problem, list maintenance has been chronically hobbled by Mac-Min's lack of admin access to the software (LetterRip).

In order to ensure that the Mac-Min email community continues to operate smoothly, we have made an executive decision to move the mailing list to a more modern, more appropriate list software (Mailman).

Besides being more reliable, the new software will allow you to set a number of preferences about the messages you receive, such as whether you want to receive plain text or MIME emails, switch between individual and digest modes, suspend your list mail temporarily, and other options.

The new software will allow the admin team to fix technical issues and list emergencies when they occur. Because we will be able to solve these issues before they become a big problem, discussions will be less distracted by administrative issues and will stay more focused on the content that matters to you.

In order to move to the new software, we will need to switch servers. Here's the part that involves you: you will need to subscribe to receive messages from the new Mac-Min address.

What you need to do:

1) Subscribe by visiting http://lists.mac-min.org/mailman/listinfo/mac-ministry_lists.mac-min.org and filling out the fields under the heading "Subscribing to Mac-ministry". The process is simple and only takes about two minutes. You will also need to respond to a confirmation email.

2) Change your email filtering/spam rules, if necessary, to receive messages from mac-ministry@lists.mac-min.org.

3) Beginning Saturday, January 8, send ALL your posts to the new list at mac-ministry@lists.mac-min.org.

4) By January 10, all messages from the old list should have stopped. You can then safely unsubscribe from the old list. To do this, send a blank email from your subscribed address to mac-ministry-off@list.macministry.org with the subject "Unsubscribe from Mac Ministry".

Please let us know ASAP if you have any difficulty subscribing or receiving messages from the new list. Contact the Admin team by sending an email to admins@lists.mac-min.org.

Again, if you want to continue to be a part of Mac-Min, you MUST subscribe to the new list. We recommend that you subscribe before the New Year. To prevent missing any Mac-Min messages, subscribe by January 8. We understand that some are traveling this time of year, and if that's you, just subscribe as soon as you can get back online. For the sake of privacy, the new list (like the old) will NOT have an archive, but if there is a need, we may temporarily add pages for relevant parts of the first few days' digests for the sake of members who are not able to subscribe promptly to the new list. The Wiki at http://mac-min.org/ will still be used to capture info of lasting value.

Please subscribe to the new list straight away, and be ready to move all discussions to the new list on January 8. This old list should continue to function past that date, but only as a signpost redirecting stragglers to our new address.

We are excited about having a more reliable and user-friendly list, and we hope that Mac-Min will be amazingly helpful to all of us in 2011.

In Christ's Service,
The Mac-Min Admin team

Brian Braunschweiger
Vincent Danen
Jon Gardner
Rory Gillespie
Aaron Hunyady
Scotte Meredith
Clive Read
Neville Reid
Faithe Thomas