Unicode Email Distribution Lists

The Unicode Consortium supports several email distribution lists, two of which are open to members and non-members alike. To prevent problems with spam, you must first subscribe to a list in order to post messages to it.

Unicode Public Email List: unicode@unicode.org

Discussion list for Unicode and general internationalization issues. Nearly 700 members world-wide, discuss such subjects as: implementing the Unicode Standard, discussion of new proposals, etc. All official news is posted to this list Notice of events, including Unicode conferences, publications & updates to The Unicode Standard

This list is self-subscribed by following the directions below, Public Email List Self-Subscribe. If you encounter problems, either subscribing or un-subscribing, please contact the Unicode office for further assistance.

Everybody is welcome to join the public email list to pose questions to the community of Unicode users. However, as a courtesy to others on the list, please check the following relevant pages before posting your question. These useful pages contain answers to many common questions:

- Frequently asked questions
- Where is my character?
- Versions of the Unicode Standard
- Technical Reports
- Unicode Resources

Publicly accessible Unicode Mail List Archives are also available.

CLDR Users Public Email List: cldr-users@unicode.org

• Discussion list for internationalization issues related to locales, including in particular the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR), the Locale Data Markup Language (LDML), and international identifiers (language, script, region, currency, and timezones).
• All official news is posted to this list
• Notice of events, including Unicode conferences, publications & updates to The Unicode Standard

This list is self-subscribed similar to the Public Email List Self-Subscribe instructions below. If you encounter problems, either subscribing or un-subscribing, please contact the Unicode office for further assistance.

Rules and etiquette are the same as the Unicode public email list.

The email archives (in raw form) are in the CLDR Users Mail List Archives.

Notification Services

Major publication and website changes are announced on both of the public lists. However, there are many documents or pages that different people may be interested in, and not all changes in those pages are announced. If you are interested in monitoring particular pages, we suggest web services that will send you email when particular pages change. Some such services are:

- http://www.eldos.org/timelyweb/timelyweb.html
- http://www.watchthatpage.com

For example, if you are interested in new technical reports or updates to existing technical reports, you can have such a service monitor the page www.unicode.org/reports/. (Note that the Unicode consortium does not endorse these particular services, they are merely supplied as examples.)

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Public Email List Self-Subscribe

Below are some instructions for subscribing, un-subscribing, and posting to "unicode@unicode.org" and "cldr-users@unicode.org". Participation in the mail lists is subject to our rules and etiquette.

You must be a subscriber to post messages to the lists; this measure is to prevent problems with spam.  Of course subscription is free.

To send messages to a list:
1. You must subscribe to the list 
2. You must send your messages from the address with which you subscribed.

1. Subscribe to Unicode and CLDR Users Lists

Subscribe to the Unicode public email list by clicking the subscribe button in the table at the bottom of this page. The list server will send you a confirmation message.  Alternatively, you may send a message to ecartis@unicode.org and write "subscribe unicode" in the subject line. Please do not send subscribe or unsubscribe messages to the list itself.

For the CLDR Users list, use "subscribe cldr-users" in the subject line, and likewise send the mail to ecartis@unicode.org, or use the buttons at the bottom of this page.

The subscription mechanism is very literal, and it doesn't know about all the aliases by which you may be known. Therefore, when you subscribe please make a note of your precise subscription address. You will not be able to unsubscribe without matching the precise address by which you subscribed. For example, if you subscribe as "John_Doe@nowhere.com" you will NOT be able to unsubscribe by the name "J.Doe@nowhere.com", or by "John_Doe@mail.nowhere.com" or any other such mismatch.

2. Unsubscribe from Unicode and CLDR Users Lists

You may remove yourself from the mail list at any time by clicking the unsubscribe button in the appropriate table at the bottom of this page. The list server will send you a confirmation message. Please do not send subscribe or unsubscribe messages to the list itself.

3. Posting Messages to Unicode and CLDR Users Lists

The mail lists are closed to outside posting, to prevent problems with spam. To send messages to the lists, you must be a subscriber, and you must send your message from the address with which you subscribed.

Note:

Before posting questions to the Unicode List, please check our Frequently Asked Questions page to make sure your question is not already answered there.

When you wish to post a message to the list (i.e., to the subscribers of the list), send your message

TO: unicode@unicode.org
SUBJECT: (your subject)
TEXT MESSAGE: (your text)

TO: cldr-users@unicode.org
SUBJECT: (your subject)
TEXT MESSAGE: (your text)

Note: Initial subscriptions are added in the moderated state, and after the subscriber's first message is submitted, moderation is removed. This form of moderation is temporary and prevents unsolicited automated mail from reaching the list. Because of this, your first message to a mail list may take some time to be posted, usually no more than a day.

4. Caveat Emptor

The lists have occasional lulls during which only a message or two per day might be posted, but have also been subject to heavy periods where more than twenty messages per day will be exchanged. Subscribers should be prepared for both circumstances. In general, you can expect to see 10 to 25 messages per day on the Unicode list, fewer on the CLDR Users list.

Subscribers should know that our public mail lists might be archived and indexed by third parties, who are themselves subscribers to our lists, and made available on their websites. Because our public lists are publicly accessible, they are under no obligation to inform us about what they are doing. The Consortium has no control over such practices and is not responsible for them. Questions or concerns regarding them must be taken up with the administrators of those websites. Some such sites may offer additional features such as news feeds or aggregate pages created from the list archives, which may be attractive to some of our subscribers. An example of such a site is gmane.org.

5. Mail List Rules and Etiquette

These mail lists are open for technical discussion of the Unicode Standard, related technical reports and technical standards, as well as related internationalization or encoding standards, locales, writing systems, and cultural phenomena. As a community resource, the Unicode list also serves the social function of keeping people with similar interests in touch with one another. Searchable on-line archives are available back to 1997. You are not required to join the list to search the archives. (Note: The CLDR Users list is new as of December 2006, and public HTML archives are not yet available; if you are a subscriber to the list and need access to raw archives, please ask.)

Discussion on the lists are free-ranging, with some specific exceptions: job postings or recruitment campaigns and direct product advertising are strictly forbidden on all of our mail lists. Posting such items may result in immediate removal from the list. (Some posting of new-product announcements is encouraged, however please avoid discussion of prices and contact the office to clear your brief message before posting.)

The maximum size of messages to the lists is limited to 50,000 bytes. If you need to send large documents or images, please post them on the web and send the URL to the list.

Subscribers to the lists should remain tolerably polite at all times and consider carefully before joining heated discussions. Certain activities are discouraged, including the use of profanity, overuse of bandwidth, product spam, frequent off-topic posts, and protracted arguments that get personal. In extreme instances, postings may be moderated or refused, or warnings may be issued by our administrative staff. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, at any time, for any reason or no reason. Your subscription may be moderated or terminated at any time without notice. Posting to the list is not a guarantee of delivery.

For the complete text of our policies, please see the Mail List Policies page.

6. Commercial Mail

Unsolicited commercial and bulk email, commonly called spam, is not welcome on any Unicode Consortium email list. The Consortium policy is to investigate and report all instances of spam to the domains and machines through which it appears to have been routed, and to cooperate in investigations undertaken by other mail administrators for the purposes of curtailing such bulk mailing practices. We reserve the right to unilaterally deny email access and relaying from any user or domain for any reason or no reason, without notice. For further information on spam, please visit:
                                         http://mail-abuse.org/rbl/
                                         http://www.ordb.org/
                                         http://spam.abuse.net/

7. Notes

• If you experience difficulty with subscription or un-subscription, please contact the Unicode office
• The mail lists are serviced by a ECARTIS server.  If you need further information, please visit http://www.ecartis.org.
• The list of subscribers is not available, so please do not ask.
• Messages are archived.  See the related links in the left column of this page for details.
• Multiple addresses: Many people these days have multiple email addresses.  If you wish to post messages from more than one address, then subscribe all of your addresses to the list and set vacation mode on the addresses that you wish to NOT receive postings.
• Subdomains: If you subscribed with an address in one sub-domain of your main domain, you may also send messages from the main domain. For purposes of subscription and un-subscription, the sub-domain addresses are acceptable as well, and the unsubscribe command works from the main or sub-domain addresses.
• If the forms below do not work, or you wish to send email messages yourself for various functions, you must address your mail to the Ecartis server ecartis@unicode.org  and in the subject line of your message, use one of the captions from the buttons below. For example, to set vacation, send mail to ecartis with the subject "set unicode vacation". The server presumes that your return address is the same as your subscription address.

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Unicode Members Email List

The Unicode Consortium also supports private email lists (unicore, cldr, and subcommittee lists) for the use of the Full, Institutional, Supporting, Associate, Liaison, and Individual Members. These email discussion lists are the first line of discussion in the development, implementation, enhancement and support of the Unicode Standard and related globalization standards. Subscription to these lists is one of the benefits of membership in the Unicode Consortium. For more information, read about  Unicode Membership or contact the Unicode office.