The Archives are available through the main RAMS page. You can also bookmark the direct link to the Archives Tool.

The Archives tool provides access to the archived postings to a list, as well as to statistical information about that list. The Archives tool can also be used to diagnose list problems.

All lists are archived. However, some may have Public Archives, which can be viewed by anyone with RAMS access, while others may have Admin Only Archives, which can be viewed only by a list's manager.

Selection

When you go to the Archives tool, you will be presented with a list of mailing lists to choose from. To get to the archives and statistics for a given mailing list, click on a list name to highlight it, then click on View Archive.

View Archive Page

The View Archive page consists of two sections. The top section is the statistics section, and the bottom section is the archive section.

Statistics

RAMS tracks several statistics:

• Number of messages is total number of messages that have been posted to the list.
• Average number of recipients is the average number of recipients per each message that has been posted to the list.
• Total number of recipients is the total of all recipients over the life of the list.
• Last message sent shows the date of the last message RAMS processed for the list. This is very useful for determining if a recent message has been delivered to the list.
• Average message size shows the average byte size of each message.
• Total message size shows the total byte size of all messages the list has received.

If a message is not successfully posted to all members of a list, no statistical information will be generated for that message. A "successful" posting is one that has been sent out to all members; it does not mean that each of the addresses is actually valid or reachable. For example, if an email address no longer exists or cannot accept mail for some reason, this will not affect the RAMS statistics.

Archives

The archive lists all the messages posted in the list, from newest to oldest, beginning with the first message posted after archiving was turned on. For every message, it lists:

• Date: the date and time the last copy of the message left the RAMS system to be mailed to the list members.
• Subject: the contents of the Subject header of the message.
• Poster: the address in the From header of the message
• Recipients: the number of addresses it was sent out to
• View: a "View" button to click on to show the text of the message

In addition, depending on how a list is configured, certain lists may also have:

• Spam Level: the score assigned to the message by the SpamAssassin program. "N/A" means the message was posted before spam filtering was available, so there is no score to show. The higher the listed score, the more spam-like SpamAssassin considered the message.
• Approved By: the NetID (if the RAMS web tools were used) or e-mail address (if an e-mail reply was used) of the person who approved the message.
• Released By: for lists with prime-time restriction, the manager who released the message so that it could be posted immediately. "N/A" means that the messages was released by the RAMS application.

A message will only appear in the archives if the post passed through moderation and spam filtering. If it is still being held for moderation or if spam filters prevented it from being delivered, it will not be added to the archives.

Note: The archives list all messages that have been processed by RAMS for the list, but they do not guarantee that those messages reached all members of the list. For example, if your mailbox is full, RAMS will add the message to the archive even though it could not deliver the message.

If no messages have yet been posted to a list, or if you are viewing an Admin Only Archive and are not a manager for the list, you'll get a "List NAME has no archived messages" message instead of the archives.