[Mailman-Users] monster created! untangling many lists with many subscribers?

[Steve Sweet]

We've been using mailman for several months now, and both we (the
administrators) and they (the users) have been happy with it.  So much so in
fact, that we have now been asked to create so many different lists its become
an administrative nightmare.  I'm hoping someone more experienced will have
suggestions on how to tame the monster we've created.

We're running mailing lists for one school within a university.  The school has
several hundred subscribers (personnel) split amongst faculty, staff and
students, a number of different institutes and programs, all spread over 6
different geographic locations.  There are members of each institute at each
location.  There are members of each program at each location, and within each
institute.  Each location, institute and program has faculty, staff, and students.

We have been asked to create a list for essentially every different permutation;
 all faculty, all faculty at location A, all faculty at location A in program B,
all faculty at location A in institute B and program C, all staff ... you get
the point.

This is an enormous mess of lists and keeping up with them is tedious and time
consuming.  Relying on the users to adminster themselves helps somewhat -- the
students are generally good at it -- but the staff are not and the faculty are
hopeless.  The administration has been clear that we need to make sure the list
memberships are kept up to date since vital notices go out via the lists.

Any suggestions before I pull whats left of my hair out?

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