Mailing Lists
E-Mail by Subscription
Whether you're interested in building a community of artists or learning
the latest back-rub technique, there's bound to be a group of people on
the Internet conversing about it via a mailing list. Here are three easy
ways to find out about subscribing to one.
Wondering about the Zen of growing bonsai? Or the psychological elements
of humor? Maybe you want to know the current thinking on bagpipes, or get
a critique of your secretly penned short stories. Perhaps you have a penchant
for non-human primate research?
The Internet is a resource for all of this and much more. You can access
a lot of it through mailing lists, which actually
are groups of people interested in certain subjects.
Members of the list send messages to a group address, and everyone on the
list receives them as e-mail. As a subscriber, you will get messages 24
hours a day, which enables you to keep up with the latest information as
it's sent out.
There are literally thousands of mailing lists. Some are more specific than
others. Because many universities use the Internet as a research tool, a
large percentage of mailing lists are academically oriented -- and highly
specialized. However, there are also broad and narrow mailing lists on almost
any subject that might be of interest to you.
How to Track Down Those Mailing Lists
Like everything else on the Internet, the wealth of potential mailing lists
you can subscribe to is sometimes difficult to fathom. There are three main
ways to find out which mailing lists are available.
First, you can check the newsgroups news.newusers
and news.groups for interesting mailing lists.
And, though I don't recommend this, you can also find many mailing lists
by sending an e-mail to listserv@bitnic.educom.edu.
Put the words List Global in the body of your mail message. Don't put anything
else in the body (or the subject line). In a matter of days or hours, a
machine will send you mail with a very large number of mailing lists.
Another way to find mailing lists, or lists of mailing lists, is to use
Gopher. This is certainly easier than wading through a text file, but you
also have to trust your luck a bit in Gopherspace. Still, most university
Gophers have links to mailing list descriptions, or to a mailing list archive,
which means you can read portions of the information a mailing list group
previously sent out.
The Low-Tech Approach
Finally, you can buy a book that describes available mailing lists. This
may seem low tech, but it's actually harder reading the information on-screen
than it is to flip through 200 pages of alphabetized mailing lists.
That's how many pages of mailing lists are in Eric Braun's The Internet
Directory (Fawcett Columbine [Ballantine Books]). It has the advantage
of combining most of the available descriptive information from many Internet
sources.
Of course, the disadvantage of books about the Internet is that information
dates so quickly. Still, The Internet Directory is a good place to start.
All of these sources contain subscription information for mailing lists.
You subscribe to a mailing list by sending e-mail to a subscription address,
often with the single word Subscribe in the body of the message. It's important
to carefully follow the subscription directions for each list, because they
vary from one to another. If you need help, you can generally send mail
to the group's subscription address, with the single word Help in the body
of the text.
You should receive an e-mail reply that tells you how to join the group.
The reply also informs you about quitting the group, so save it in a file
that you can retrieve later. And, by the way, there really is a list about
bagpipes.
-- James H. Roberts
Smiley -- A Language All Its Own
Although it's unlikely that you will actually meet -- face to face -- with
the people who make up a mailing list, you'll find a clear image of them
beginning to form in your mind if you spend enough time sending and receiving
messages. There's the long-winded bore clammering for attention, the quiet
intellectual immersed in thought, the party animal looking for a good time,
the belligerent cynic who frowns upon the goings on. Particular quirks will
become apparent as buttons get pushed and tempers flare. While the messages
you'll read will be "only" words, there are many ways that innuendoes,
jokes, and secrets can be put between the lines.
People on the Internet have become quite adept at inserting emotion and
self-expression into computer messages by using typographic characters and
other tricks of the keyboard. With a winking smiley '-) to Seth Godin, compiler
of The Smiley Dictionary (1993, Peachpit Press), here are a few ways
you can spice up your messages and let your personality shine through the
Internet.
:-) Classic smiley
(-: Left-handed smiley
,-} Wry and winking smiley
8-0 "Omigod!!"(:-( Very unhappy smiley
;-( Crying smiley
:-/ Skeptical smiley
:-> Sarcastic smiley
:-@ Screaming smiley
:-* Kiss
:-X A big wet kiss
:-<> Open-mouthed kiss
>:-> A very lewd remark was just made
:-& Tongue-tied
:-6 Smiley after eating something spicy
:-[ Vampire smiley
:-E Bucktoothed vampire
:-a Smiley touching her tongue to her nose
@:-) Smiley wearing a turban
(8-0 It's Mr. Bill!
:-e Disappointed smiley
:-S What you say makes no sense
X-( You are brain dead
|-o Bored smiley
8:-) Glasses on forehead
0|-) Taoist monk
:-$ Biting one's tongue
:-`| Smiley with a fever
#-) Haight-Ashbury smiley
<g> Grin
<l> Laugh
<s> Sigh
<jk> Just kidding
<i> Irony
< > No comment
\\// Live long and prosper
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