Mailing lists

W3C hosts thousands of mailing lists for our group members and the general public to discuss and send feedback on Web standards work at W3C. The corresponding mailing list archives, most of which allow anyone to join and participate, contain millions of messages dating back to the earliest days of the Web.

Our Mailing list policies govern W3C email and mailing lists usage.

General information

Each W3C mailing list has its own policies regarding who may post to the list. Those subscribed to a list are generally able to post directly to the list without delay; those who are not may be subject to manual moderation.

First-time posters to our lists with public archives will need to give us permission to publish their message in our public archives using our archive approval system.

Each mailing list has a specific purpose. Please avoid cross-posting to multiple lists.

Posting of Unsolicited Bulk E-mail (UBE), or spam is strictly forbidden.

Conference announcements and calls for papers or participation are generally not welcome on W3C lists. Please see our spam policy for more details.

Messages in our mailing list archives are generally not removed or edited, except in very rare circumstances. See our Archive Editing Policy for more information.

Subscribing and unsubscribing

Members of W3C groups are automatically subscribed to the relevant list(s) when joining the group(s), and unsubscribed when leaving.

Many of our public mailing lists also allow subscriptions without being a member of a group, using an email command interface described below.

Before joining a group or subscribing to a mailing list please be sure you have read our mailing list policies and agree to abide by our Code of Conduct (Code).

Group-related mailing lists

To subscribe or unsubscribe to mailing lists associated with a W3C group, please visit the home page for the group(s) in question.

A list of your current groups is available on your user profile page.

Subscribing manually

To subscribe to a W3C mailing list, for example www-talk, send "subscribe" in the subject of a message to the list name followed by -request at our domain, for example:

        To: [email protected]
        Subject: subscribe

You should receive an automated response with instructions on how to confirm your subscription request. Note that you will not get an acknowledgement if you are already subscribed.

Unsubscribing manually

To unsubscribe from a mailing list, for example www-talk, send "unsubscribe" in the Subject of a message to the list name followed by "-request" at our domain, for example [email protected]:

        To: [email protected]
        Subject: unsubscribe

To unsubscribe an email address other than your current address, specify the old address following unsubscribe in the Subject, for example:

        To: [email protected]
        Subject: unsubscribe [email protected]

In either case you should receive an autoreply with instructions on how to confirm your request.

Asking for help

All mailing list administrative requests, including asking for help, must be sent to a *-request address (per RFC2142), never to the list itself. For a mailing list named [email protected], the associated request address would be [email protected].

Searching and referencing

An archive search tool is available.

It is frequently useful to refer to a message (e.g., from the body of an email or from a web page) using a URI to the message in the archive. In addition, you can use the message's own "message-id" and map it to the archive URI using the message-id mapping tool.

Guidelines and policies