I am not aware of any standards, or even "best practices" documents regarding welcome messages, and the default welcome message text in most MLM products seems to have been written by MLM geeks for MLM geeks. In other words, it is almost completely incomprehensible to normal humans.
I am the co-owner of a list for hi-ed email administrators, and we replaced the default welcome message with one that appears to provide most of the information that was missing from the message you received and does not require a post-graduate degree in MLM Science for comprehension. The text of our welcome message is appended below my signature.
-- Paul Russell Senior Systems Administrator OIT Messaging Services Team University of Notre Dame
----- begin welcome message for HiEd-EmailAdmin list -----
Please save this message for future reference.
Welcome to the HIED-EMAILADMIN list. This list exists to facilitate discussion about all aspects of email administration and management in higher education environments. This includes, but is not limited to: email platform/application, emerging email standards, mail flow, unsolicited bulk or commercial email (spam), email viruses, account management, email clients (both fat and thin), disaster recovery, and email lists. The discussion will focus on these issues within a higher education context. The primary audience is email administrators in higher education, however, all members of the higher education community are welcome to join the list.
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