Electronic mailing list
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An electronic mailing list, a type of Internet forum, is a special usage of e-mail that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. It is similar to a traditional mailing list — a list of names and addresses — as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to its members or customers, but typically refers to four things: a list of e-mail addresses, the people ("subscribers") receiving mail at those addresses, the publications (e-mail messages) sent to those addresses, and a reflector, which is a single e-mail address that, when designated as the recipient of a message, will send a copy of that message to all of the subscribers.
Electronic mailing lists are usually fully or partially automated through the use of special mailing list software and a reflector address that are set up on a server capable of receiving e-mail. Incoming messages sent to the reflector address are processed by the software, and, depending on their content, are acted upon internally (in the case of messages containing commands directed at the software itself) or are distributed to all e-mail addresses subscribed to the mailing list. Depending on the software, additional addresses may be set up for the purpose of sending commands. Examples of commands are requests to subscribe or unsubscribe.
Popular examples of mailing list software include GNU Mailman, ezmlm, LISTSERV and Majordomo. Today, mailing lists are most often used for collaboration on various projects and as a way of distributing current news and other such information. One very popular mailing list is Bugtraq.
Types of mailing lists
One type of electronic mailing list is an announcement list, which is used primarily as a one-way conduit of information and can only be "posted to" by selected people.Another type of electronic mailing list is a discussion list, in which any subscriber may post. On a discussion list, a subscriber uses the mailing list to send messages to all the other subscribers, who may answer in similar fashion. Thus, actual discussion and information exchanges can happen. Mailing lists of this type are usually topic-oriented (for example, politics, scientific discussion, joke contests), even if the topic can range from extremely narrow to "whatever you think could interest us". In this they are similar to Usenet newsgroups, and share the same aversion to off-topic messages. The term discussion group encompasses both these types of lists and newsgroups.
On some discussion lists, every message must be approved by a moderator before being sent to the rest of the subscribers. Moderator approval is usually employed to keep a high average quality of posts and weed out spam.
Some mailing lists are open to anyone who want to join them, while others require an approval from the list owner before one can join. Joining a mailing list is called "subscribing" and leaving a list is called "unsubscribing".
Mailing list services
Free web-based services offering an easy way to run and maintain such lists were popular in the late 1990s, but many of these were taken over or went bust, so that the only popular provider is now Yahoo! Groups. This is used by a wide range of groups, including organisations who might at first glance be considered 'rivals' to Yahoo! MSN Groups appears to be pushing hard to catch up to Yahoo!. [Freelists.org] is a web-based service using all-free software, though it may be more difficult for some users to set up. The new version of [Google Groups] includes free mailing list services as well as access to Usenet.See also
External links
- article at , a Library and information science wiki
- [GNU Mailman's mailing list explanation inside Mailman's documentation]
- [Mailing List Management Programs (List Servers)]
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