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Mailing lists are special programs that help automate email communication within a group.
When email became available, it was very popular, but people soon found that it had some shortcomings. Often, a group of people with similar interests wanted to simplify the process of communicating via email. At first, if you had five people around the world who were interested in your research topic, you would simply send the email five times, once to each colleague. This quickly became unwieldy if you shared an interest with a larger group. The solution was to use the distribution list feature built into many email programs. You could learn the email addresses of all the people with similar interests, and store them as one name in your address book. This worked fine as long as the list of people stayed relatively short, and the people on the list didn't change too frequently. This kind of approach had some setbacks, though. If a person no longer wanted on the list, every other member of the list had to remove that person from their own personal copy of the list.List management became a messy job, so computer scientists developed a program that could automate the mailing lists.
The idea of these programs is very simple. The program has an email address, usually with the term listserv or majordomo in the name. (Listserv and Majordomo are the two main types of programs used to do mailing lists). A person who wants to join the list could send a command to the majordomo program through his email client asking to sign on. All members of the list is given another email address for the actual list, which is also controlled by the majordomo program. When a member sent a message to the list, the controlling program would automatically send it to each member of the list.
Fran has always had a lifelong fascination with pygmy hippos. she could talk about them for days. Unfortunately, she has a very difficult time finding people who will listen to her that long. She was beginning to feel she was the only pygmy hippo fan in the world. Fran took a class that introduced her to the Internet and mailing lists. She knew this would be her chance to find other hippophiles (yep, my spell-checker blew a gasket on that one! I hit the ignore button.). She found a mailing list called hippos by searching around the world wide web for mailing lists indexes. The instructions told her the hippo mailing list had two different addresses. The first one was majordomo@nml.zoo.org She knew by the majordomo part that this address was the majordomo / listserv program, and that she would have to send a message to it so she could be part of the list. By following the instructions she found on the index page, she knew she had to start up her email program. She did so, and composed a message to majordomo@nml.zoo.org Her message contained only one line, which again she got from the instructions. It was: subscribe hippos She sent the message, and in a few minutes she got back a response! It welcomed her to the mailing list, and told her she would start getting mails soon from other members of the list. It also told her how to sign off of the list if she found it was not to her liking. She carefully saved this message, in case she ever needed it later.
Fran waited for a couple of days, and got some wonderful email about pygmy hippos. After watching for a few days, she wanted to send a message to the group introducing herself and asking questions about one particular family of hippos she knew about.
To send the mail, she went to her email program, and composed a message to the list itself. She knew the address, because it had been in the instructions she saw on the web, and it was also in the first message she got from the group. She addressed her message to hippo@nml.zoo.org. She sent the message, and in a few days, got a number of greetings and responses from fellow hippo lovers. Fran found newfound happiness and a group of fellow hippophiles (had to use that word again!) all over the world.
Mailing lists are ideal solutions for problems like Fran's. They are easy and inexpensive to set up and maintain, so you will see mailing lists on just about any topic there is. Many college courses now have a dedicated mailing list, intended to encourage student interaction and group - problem solving. Mailing lists are also used inside corporations so that groups within the organization can communicate more easily through email.
The most difficult aspect of working with mailing lists is the distinction between the list itself and the program that controls the list. Both have email addresses, and both are usually on the same machine, but they have very different purposes. When you look at a mailing list index (there are a number of them on the www.) you will see something like this.
THE HIPPO LIST
To Join: email: majordomo@nml.zoo.org
message body: subscribe hippo
List address: hippo@nml.zoo.org
The controlling program usually has a name like majordomo or listserv. You will probably only send mail to this address twice, once to join the list, and once to leave. Any mail sent to this address is NOT sent to a human, but to a program. The program can only handle very specific input, so you must type exactly what you are told, or the program will reject your request. If you say "Please subscribe me to the hippo list" the program will not understand and will reject you. Majordomo (or listserv) is a PROGRAM, not a PERSON.
The address you will use more often is hippo@nml.zoo.org. This address is the common address for the group. It is also sent to the majordomo program, but it is 'bounced' from there to the address of every other member of the group. Anything you send to the list address will be read by human members of the group. (and maybe hippos, but they are pretty tough on keyboards)
This leads us to the major faux paus of mailing list members. Once you join a mailing list, you will undoubtably run across messages that read: "Unsubscribe me" or something else similar. The person who sent the message has told you two things:
1) They don't like the list anymore or the people on it
2) They don't know how to use mailing lists, because they sent a command to the list, not the program.
If you are a mean-spirited person, you could send that errant soul a scathing message decrying their ignorance and lack of manners. Such a message is called a "flame" in Internet parlance. An exchange of angry emails is called a "flame war."
Be very careful when using a mailing list that you track which messages go to the controlling program and which ones go to the list. You don't want people to flame you.
Mailing lists are related to email, so many of the same rules apply, but there are a few new ones:
Any mailing list or other place that people gather together is bound to have its own sociology. As a group of people exchanges ideas, there will be friendships, rivalries, in- jokes, and recurring themes. Many mailing lists also develop their own codes and shorthand. For example, one mailing list that discusses flight simulators uses abbreviations for all the major flight simulators. FS5 stands for Microsoft Flight Simulator version 5, WC3 is another flight simulator, and so on. This can be very intimidating if you are new to the group. Different groups also have different expectations in terms of how much they expect members to stay on the group topic, whether they allow name - calling and other uncivil behavior, and the kinds of language and discussions that are allowed. If you do not follow the norms of the group, you will certainly be flamed, and may be kicked out of the group.
It is a very good idea to learn about the group before you get too involved. Just stay quiet and read without sending messages until you get a feel for how the group interacts. This behavior is called 'lurking' and is quite acceptable, even polite. Once you feel you can participate in the spirit of the group, feel free to do so. If you find you do not like the group, quietly unsubscribe through the controlling program, and no one will know you were even there.
In general, try to stick to the topic the group is supposed to be addressing. If you have comments that fall outside the group's topic, send private emails.
Once you develop some relationships within the group, carefully consider what should be sent through private email, and what the entire group should know. For example, two students decided to cheat on an exam, and discussed their plans over the class mailing list. They neglected to notice that the teacher was also a member of the group, and knew exactly what they were planning. He sent the students a private email explaining how mailing lists worked, and asked for an extra homework assignment about security, ethics, and the Internet, and there was a happy ending. It might not have turned out that way. Some information is best kept private.
Mailing lists can get out of hand quickly. If you belong to a very active list, or to many lists, you could easily pile up several hundred messages in a day. This becomes a lot of information to sift through.
Mailing lists are very easy to create, but they are also easy to destroy. That really cool mailing list you saw last week may not exist this week. There is absolutely no central control of mailing lists, so they come and go with amazing frequency.
It is impossible to know which mailing lists are available. There is no organizational scheme or structure to them. It can be difficult finding exactly the list you want.
As mentioned, the two most common mailing list server programs are majordomo and listserv. Mailing lists do not require special client programs, because they use the email protocol, and exactly the same programs you would use for email.