Internet 101: Mailing lists or mailbox busters?
From FutureNet : .net 1, Dec '94 - Easy Internet Written by Davey Winder
Providing a similar service to Usenet (namely the provision of discussion groups on all sorts of subjects) are mailing lists (many of which are, in fact, archives from Usenet newsgroups). The difference is that a mailing list is available to anyone with an Internet e-mail address, because the discussion group is conducted completely by e-mail. These lists work on a very simple premise. You send e-mail to a central mailbox, and all messages received there are then copied to everyone who's on that particular `mailing list.' The simplicity of the idea makes it a particularly favourite Net feature - and as a result some of the lists can generate an awful lot of postings. I subscribe to a number of mailing lists that each provide my mailbox with between 100-200 messages a week!
The simplicity of mailing lists makes them a particularly favourite Internet feature indeed.Subscribing to a mailing list costs nothing but your time, and a certain amount of hard drive capacity. All you have to do is send an e-mail message requesting that your name be added to the mailing list concerned, which is then maintained either by a person or a computer program known as a listserv. (You can tell the type that are looked after manually by the fact that the e-mail address for subscriptions is generally the list name with -request appended to it.) To join the Impact Online Newsletter mailing list, for example, you'd send a message to news-request@impactonline.org. There tends to be more than one mailing list at each listserv site, so if you wanted to join the Bonsai Tree list, which is maintained at cms.cc.wayne.edu, for instance, you'd send a message to listserv@cms.cc.wayne.edu which contains the text, sub bonsai <your name>. In both cases always give your full, real, name. You may come across mailing lists that are computer maintained, but not by a listserv program. These operate in much the same way and have strange names such as majordomo, almanac, and mailserv.
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