Statistics on AEGEE Mailing Lists

Table of Content

• Statistics on Subscriptions and Unsubscriptions
• All Sources of AEGEE News
• Statistics on Postings
• Subscription Links to the Mailing Lists
• Excursus: The AEGEE Forum

The extr lines extrapolate the data from the current year to the whole year. The current number is multiplied by 365 and divided by the number of days which passed this year (336). The lines after extr present data from 1st January until Sun 01 Dec 2024 12:00 UTC.

Data in this file is updated on the first of each month.

Statistics on Subscriptions and Unsubscriptions

The SUBSCRIBERS column is the number of subscribers on 1st January. ADDED is the number of new subscribers to a mailing list during the year. REMOVED is the number of removed addresses from a mailing list for any reason.

Same data in CSV machine readable format: https://mail.aegee.org/stats/subscribers.csv.

Chart on the subscribers per year on 1st January by Michele Marchi

After 2015 the software (Listserv) logged at the first usage of a mailing list each year the total number of subscribers. Before that the number of subscribers were logged only when the logging started. Additions and removals of addresses from the mailing list were also logged almost always. This allows to calculate the number of subscribers on 1st January each year before 2015 and to compare the result with the first logged number. The cells with = show the real logged number of subscribers, when it is different from the calculated number. The discrepancies are neglectable.

Missing triples means there is no data. Lowest SUBSCRIBERS value in each column is for part of a year, not necessary from 1st January.

Before 2019 during the Agora/EPM/EBM application process, applicants were offered checkboxes for the mailing lists AEGEE-L, ANNOUNCE-L, AEGEE-AGORA-L, and since 2015 also AEGEENEWS-L. If checkboxes were clicked, the applicants received an email with a hyperlink. After clicking the hyperlink, the applicants were subscribed to the selected mailing list. In turn around five hundred current members were added to ANNOUNCE-L and AEGEE-L each year. In addition, the printed twice a year “AEGEE Address book” was sent by snail mail to the antennae and it contained once again hints for the major AEGEE mailing lists.

After the option to join conveniently AEGEE-L/ANNOUNCE-L during the Agora/EPM application process was dropped, the amount of new subscribers to these mailing lists reduced significantly. In turn, sending now open calls over mailing lists hardly reaches the current members. Expressing and discussing ideas on the development of AEGEE, but also raising concerns on a direction AEGEE has taken, does not reach any more current members over mailing lists (AEGEE-L), compared to the time before 2019.

On AEGEENEWS-L subscribers were added sometimes by uploading a file with email addresses. In 2005 there were two such uploads with a total of 1108 addresses; there was one file uploaded in 2012 with 7953 addresses; in 2014 - 6474 addresses; in 2016 two files with a total of 1165 addresses. In 2018 the subscribers of AEGEENEWS-L were asked if they want to stay on the mailing list. The received email contained a hyperlink. Subscribers, who have not clicked the link in a while, were removed from AEGEENEWS-L.

AEGEE-SU-L was also filled with email addresses by uploading a file. These were likely all the email addresses of SU-interested members, e.g. those who have applied to a Summer University. Over the mailing list were sent open calls for Summer Universities, when participants cancelled. In 2012 by uploading files 4139 subscribers were added. In 2013 - 4104 subscribers were added by uploading a file, in 2015 - 1925 subscribers.

The subscribers to BOARDINF-L were added/removed each day based on a checkbox in the Lotus Notes system, later in Intranet. As all addresses were removed and added again, there was no logging for many years.

All Sources of AEGEE News

Apart from the visible and invisible at https://lists.aegee.org mailing lists, here are mentioned more AEGEE resources. The data is extracted at the end of October 2022. Links with an asterisk are mentioned in the address book description of the body at https://my.aegee.eu/bodies, in total these are three links. Antennae are not considered.

Comité Directeur - On 20 October 2022 https://www.facebook.com/aegee has 62 830 subscribers, https://twitter.com/aegee_europe has 8535 subscribers; the AEGEE Telegram channel https://t.me/aegee_europe, created on 21 Jul 2017, has 768 subscribers; https://www.instagram.com/aegee_europe/ has 4411 subscribers, and https://www.linkedin.com/company/aegee/ has 7627 subscribers, https://linktr.ee/aegee_europe. Open Calls: https://linktr.ee/OCsAEGEE (not maintained).

Chair team — https://linktr.ee/ChairTeamAEGEE, https://www.facebook.com/ChairTeam has 1564 subscribers. For past Agorae/EPM there have been separate calendars or telegram groups.

Juridical Commission — https://www.facebook.com/juridicalcommission/ 732 subscribers; https://linktr.ee/juridicalcommission, https://www.instagram.com/juridicalcommission/ — 267 subscribers.

AEGEE’s Online Magazine - AEGEEan — https://www.zeus.aegee.org/magazine/, feeds: RDF, RSS 2.0, ATOM; https://www.facebook.com/aegeean - 6900 subscribers, https://www.instagram.com/theaegeean/ - 408 subscribers.

AEGEE Academy — https://www.aegee-academy.org, https://www.instagram.com/aegee_academy/ - 588 subscribers, https://linktr.ee/AEGEE_Academy, https://www.facebook.com/AEGEE.Academy - 2310 subscribers.

Agora Election Observation — https://www.projects.aegee.org/eop/; feeds RDF, RSS 2.0, ATOM; https://twitter.com/eop_aegee - 413 subscribers.

Sustainability Commitee - https://www.instagram.com/aegee_sc/ - 422 subscribers, https://linktr.ee/SCAEGEE, https://www.facebook.com/aegee.sc - 381 subscribers, https://www.facebook.com/groups/638616062983671 - Discussion Group - 621 subscribers.

Social Equity — https://linktr.ee/social.equity*, https://www.instagram.com/se.aegee/ 692 subscribers, https://www.tiktok.com/@se.aegee - 2 subscribers, https://twitter.com/se_aegee - 24 subscribers, https://www.facebook.com/se.aegee - 517 subscribers.

Network Commission — https://linktr.ee/NetworkCom*, https://www.facebook.com/Network.Commission.AEGEE 5500 subscribers, https://www.instagram.com/netcom_aegee/ 759 subscribers.

Summer University Project — https://aegee.org/su, https://www.instagram.com/aegee_su/ 2610 subscribers, https://www.facebook.com/AEGEE.SU/ 11991 subscribers, https://linktr.ee/aegee_su

Information Technology Committee - https://www.facebook.com/AEGEE.ITC/ - 761 subscribers.

Events Quality Assurance Committee — https://www.facebook.com/AEGEE.Events/ - last updated in March 2021, 6363 subscribers.

Political activism — https://www.aegee.org/political-activism/, https://www.instagram.com/pa.aegee/ - 445 subscribers, https://www.facebook.com/pa.aegee - 344 subscribers.

Mental Health — https://www.aegee.org/mental-health/, https://linktr.ee/mhwg.aegee, https://www.instagram.com/mh.aegee/ - 726 subscribers, https://www.facebook.com/mh.aegee - this is accessible only after login.

Climate Emergency — https://www.aegee.org/climate-emergency/, https://www.instagram.com/ce.aegee/ — 682 subscribers, https://www.facebook.com/ce.aegee — 450 subscribers, https://linktr.ee/CEWG20212022, Telegram group https://t.me/joinchat/wTrqmXWa965jN2Yy 9 subscribers.

Europe on Track — https://europeontrack.org*, feeds RDF, RSS 2.0, ATOM; https://twitter.com/EuropeOnTrack — 517 subscribers, https://www.facebook.com/EuropeOnTrack/ — 10667 subscribers, https://www.instagram.com/europeontrack/ - 2285 subscribers, https://linktr.ee/EuropeOnTrack, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLa2sABk8swS2msEY94o-pg — 126 subscribers.

Others

• https://www.facebook.com/groups/aegeeans/ private group, 8131 subscribers: “One and only official facebook group of AEGEE-Europe. It is moderated in order to avoid spamming and too many posts happening at once.”.
• Blog of AEGEE Migration Interest Group - https://migraegee.wordpress.com - until August 2016.
• https://t.me/aegee_lgtb - LGBT+ AEGEE - 58 subscribers.
• The Silver Times — https://www.silvertimes.eu/, https://www.facebook.com/silenceisgoldentherestissilver/ (125 subscribers)
• Eastern Partnership Project — https://mail.aegee.org/eap feeds RDF, RSS 2.0, ATOM - until October 2019.

According to https://my.aegee.eu/pages/mailing-lists and https://linktr.ee/OCsAEGEE the subscription link to the AEGEE Newsletter for external partners is https://lists.aegee.org/join/aegeenews-l. AEGEENEWS-L has 851 subscribers. At the bottom of www.aegee.org the link “Newsletter” points to https://aegee.us7.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=7a170c64e0d3990f3f6629d21&id=fc8908d780. The archives to the latter for 2016—2017 are at https://us7.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=7a170c64e0d3990f3f6629d21&id=f1954e322c.

AEGEE Golden Times - https://www.aegeegoldentimes.eu; feeds RDF, RSS 2.0, ATOM; https://www.facebook.com/aegeegoldentimes - 7800 subscribers, https://www.linkedin.com/company/goldentimes - 37 subscribers, https://www.instagram.com/aegeegoldentimes/ - 1286 subscribers, https://www.youtube.com/user/aegeegoldentimes - 112 subscribers, https://twitter.com/aegeegolden - 199 subscribers.

The amount of sources to obtain AEGEE News is kind of too much. Using a mailing list like ANNOUNCE-L as an aggregator of news is a simple way to be informed about the happenings.

The mailing lists at lists.aegee.org do not require visiting a website to get updates, do not show advertisements, do not collect personal data (cookies), neither do they track users, nor sell collected data.

Statistics on Postings to AEGEE Mailing Lists

The following table presents the amount of postings (new emails) distributed over AEGEE-wide mailing lists on https://lists.aegee.org.

The SUM column is the total of all postings from the previous columns for the year, not counting ALL-OF-BEST-L.

Same data in CSV machine readable format: https://mail.aegee.org/stats/postings.csv.

Subscription Links to the Mailing Lists

• https://lists.aegee.org/join/AEGEE-L
• https://lists.aegee.org/join/ANNOUNCE-L
• https://lists.aegee.org/join/AEGEE-EVENT-L
• https://lists.aegee.org/join/AEGEE-SU-L
• https://lists.aegee.org/join/AEGEENEWS-L
• https://lists.aegee.org/join/AEGEE-AGORA-L
• https://lists.aegee.org/join/AEGEE-ALL-L
• https://lists.aegee.org/join/BOARDINF-L

Analysis and Notes

In 2005 the mailing list AEGEE-HTML-L was created, and was later renamed to ANNOUNCE-L. The numbers consider the postings under the old and new name.

While ANNOUNCE-L was at the beginning only meant as an HTML-enabled mailing list for bi-weekly newsletters, it became over time the more “prestigious” mailing list, compared to AEGEE-L. This can be a consequence of the fact that HTML messages are disallowed on AEGEE-L, but allowed on ANNUNCE-L. The prestigious status moved more emails from AEGEE-L to ANNOUNCE-L and simultaneously led to a smaller sum of all postings. Merging ANNOUNCE-L and AEGEE-L into a single mailing list, where everybody can post, could increase in the future the total amount of postings.

Zero in the past means either data for that period is not considered, the mailing list has not existed yet, or there were no postings during the period. E.g. the mailing list AEGEE-SU-L exists since 1997. Before February 2007 postings on AEGEE-SU-L were handled in a different way, and the table does not consider the postings before 2007. Zero for 2014 means that there were zero postings for AEGEE-SU-L in 2014.

For some years and mailing lists data is calculated from the middle of the year. From the table it is not evident if a cell is for the whole or part of the year. However for the last ten years in all columns the data is for the whole year.

All emails to the mailing list AEGEE-ALL-L are sent to the subscribers of ANNOUNCE-L, AEGEE-AGORA-L, AEGEE-EVENT-L, AEGEE-L, AEGEE-SU-L, and BOARDINF-L. If the same email address is subscribed to several mailing lists, it receives the email only once.

The mailing list AEGEE-AGORA-L was used to discuss Agora-related topics.

The mailing list AEGEE-EVENT-L is used by organizers to send announcements and reminders for upcoming events. Since November 2021 new events in the Online Membership System trigger automatically a new email over AEGEE-EVENT-L. Likewise for the Quarantine Calendar at https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=aegee.eu_v5mn651imeqpvs87v4ln7hr1f4%40group.calendar.google.com. As communicated in 2020 events for the Quarantine calendar can be submitted over https://forms.gle/Anb6zhEPbLNL3Jc27. The Quarantine calendar can be added to the personal google-calendar by clicking https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/1?cid=YWVnZWUuZXVfdjVtbjY1MWltZXFwdnM4N3Y0bG43aHIxZjRAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ. Https://cal.aegee.org contains behind the Question mark [?] other means to integrate the AEGEE events in personal calendars, like using CalDAV. Sending manually reminders on AEGEE-EVENT-L is still possible, but is not practiced any more.

In the old Lotus Notes online member registration system board members could click a checkbox “BOARDINF-L” and were then added/removed from the mailing list BOARDINF-L. The mailing list is used for board-related information, like fees, upcoming general mailing, delegates approvals. In the next online membership system, which followed (“Intranet”, not the current one), board members were unconditionally subscribed to BOARDINF-L. Before 2010 data was stored in a different way and is missing from the table.

The Board of European Students of Technology has a mailing list ALL-OF-BEST, where AEGEE members can subscribe. This list aggregates several BEST-wide mailing lists, and is mirrored at https://lists.aegee.org/all-of-best-l since May 2015. It is used for one-way announcements only. Discussions within BEST are on the Let’s Talk About BEST - LTAB mailing list, outside of ALL-OF-BEST. Between February and June 2023 BEST has discontinued sending their emails to ALL-OF-BEST@lists.aegee.org.

Excursus: The AEGEE Forum

The AEGEE Forum is a very old thing that existed in 2004 as Lotus Notes application at http://www.karl.aegee.org/forum1/aeg-forum1.nsf . In 2005 there were announcements on AEGEE-L referencing the Forum for further discussions.

In 2011 the AEGEE Forum was relaunched at www.aegee.org/forum with the words “This is supposed to be the main discussion platform in AEGEE (and not anymore AEGEE-L). We really hope that this forum will be a place where problems are discussed and solutions can be found - and not just a place for loose random comments. Therefore it is important that all of us that are active on our European level contribute to the discussion there.” After the 2011 relaunch of the AEGEE Forum the amount of emails on AEGEE-L dropped by 50% for four years in a row (each year 50% less than the previous year).

In the past it was common to send a message to AEGEE-L whenever a board changed. The archives of AEGEE-L contain e.g. an email from 27 May 1999 with subject “New CD of Barcelona”. These messages were roughly twice a year per antenna. Common was also to send congratulations to the elected board off-list, but sometimes also on the list. This kind of motivated new boards. In 2012 the “internal rules for lists” were changed by the CD so “that all new board announcements should be sent to ANNOUNCE-L so that nobody is sending reply and congrats them in lists”. On 31 Jan 2014 was sent the last board announcement over ANNOUNCE-L from AEGEE-Budapest.

In December 2014 there was another “Official launch of the Forum” as “a place for discussion for all our members. You can express there your opinions on various topics. For example you can take part in the thematic discussions on the Focus Areas of the Strategic Plan or discuss more on the organisational matters. What is more, you can start new topics that you find important to be discussed and make your ideas heard. The structure of the sub-forums is still under evaluation, so feel free to give input on that as well.” This again followed the idea to send new topics on AEGEE-L, but to keep the discussion on the forum.

The forum created the problem that you actively had to open it on a website. That means, you lost many people who would have received a mail and thus participated in the discussion. Patches to the 2015-forum software, which trigger an email over AEGEE-L for each new posting on the Forum, were not approved by the CD. Some years later the forum was abandoned, because nobody used and maintained it.