A mailing list is a group of email addresses than can all be reached by sending a message to one address; the list address. Mail sent to that address is redistributed to all subscribers (to all addresses on the list). Subscribers can have a discussion by sending messages to the list address (often called "posting to the list"); each message will be distributed to all the list's subscribers. The list of addressees is maintained by an automated list server system called Majordomo.
From: Managing Internet Information Services by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. at info@ora.com
Majordomo is a program which automates the management of Internet mailing lists. Commands are sent to Majordomo via electronic mail to handle all aspects of list maintainance. Once a list is set up, virtually all operations can be performed remotely, requiring no intervention upon the postmaster of the list site.
majordomo - n: a person who speaks, makes arrangements, or takes charge for another. From latin "major domus" - "master of the house".
You're having trouble selecting the right personal computer for your home office. Or you need advice on how to properly configure some complex program. You've waited for hours on the tech support line and all you've heard is Muzak. Perhaps you want a place to go and discuss bicycles with other cyclists. Or you want to generate some business off the Net, but know that advertising is verboten. Who ya' gonna call?
The answer is to subscribe to an Internet maillist. Unlike newsgroups, all it takes to belong to a maillist is the ability to send and receive email. This means if you're on AOL, CompuServe, or even stuck with a 2400 baud text-only shell account, you're in!
A maillist is kind of like an electronic newspaper that's dedicated to a particular topic. You may get one "copy" per day, or several. The "paper" may have anywhere from a dozen to several thousand subscribers. You can post questions there, and read answers posted by other subscribers. Or post answers helping others with problems you've already solved. Maillists exist on virtually every topic under the sun -- from automobiles to home office based businesses. No matter what your interests, whether business or hobby, a maillist provides an easy way to meet others with similar interests, and get answers to technical questions from others who have already "been there, done that."
There are maillists on:
The way it works is this. Someone "posts" an email to the maillist. That posting is then redistributed to all the members of the maillist automatically. This re-mailing can happen email by email, or in one big compilation of the recent emails known as a "digest." By far, "digest mode" is the preferred way to deal with maillists for most folks. You select "digest mode" by sending a command to the program, not the person, who manages the list. Digest mode makes maillists much more manageable. A digest may get "spit out" once per day, or every time a certain size "buffer" gets full -- usually around 25K, the upper limit for email sent to people on AOL and other on-line services.
To get started, you first need to hear or read about a maillist you are interested in subscribing to. You can locate some using one of the search engines on the WWW -- for example, a LISTSERV home page exists. AOL has a very nice search engine for finding maillists.
Next, you subscribe. This involves sending a "subscribe" message to a special address -- the address of the listmanager program. This is a computer program, not a person, that handles subscriptions and unsubscriptions, and various other housekeeping chores.
I see so many newbies sending "Please unsubscribe me" messages to the lists themselves I want to scream. You unsubscribe by sending the appropriate message to a computer PROGRAM with its own email address, not to a person, or the list itself, where all 500 other people are going to read it and get irritated. The computer programs running the subscriptions and unsubscriptions don't understand anything but the exact syntax the instructions give you and ignore everything after seeing something they don't understand, like "please." So you've got to get your commands perfect to either subscribe, or unsubscribe to a maillist.
Common listmanager programs include MAJORDOMO and LISTSERV. These programs process your subscription (command), and put you on the list. When you decide you've had enough, they'll process your unsubscribe command also. Some listmanagers (programs) manage several lists at the same "site" and subscription and unsubscription requests must reference the appropriate list. The whole point is, read the directions sent to you and obey them explicitly or you wont be able to subscribe or unsubscribe. One rookie added pleases and thank you's to his messages and wondered why he was having trouble!
Now that you've subscribed, you'll begin receiving email. Often, a maillist will send you a set of "instructions" right up front. Be sure and save this "Welcome to the XXX maillist." email or you may one day find yourself having a hard time remembering the correct address to send your unsubscribe command to -- it's different from the one you post messages to. This welcome message usually contains valuable information like how to set digest mode, how to request help, rules for the list, who the "list mom" is, if anyone, and most importantly -- how to unsubscribe. It will supply you the email addresses both for the list manager program, and for posting to the list itself. Any email sent to the list itself gets posted and forwarded on to all the other subscribers. So sending a "Please unsubscribe me" message there will merely annoy the 500 other readers who read it. Neither the listmom nor the listserv program (which is the only one of those two capable of unsubscribing you) will ever see your message.
The second thing you'll probably want to do, after getting subscribed, is to send a second email to the list manager with a command something like "SET MODE DIGEST." Every list manager does this slightly differently, so this may actually be the third thing you do. The second may be to send the command "HELP" which almost universally results in your receiving a complete list of commands for that particular list manager program. Even two different versions of majordomo may operate differently. Setting digest mode will ensure you get 1-2 BIG emails per day, compilations, instead of dozens or even hundreds of individual emails. This is the only thing that makes belonging to the larger maillists manageable.
Some maillists are moderated. This means the "list mom," or person responsible for the list, will decide which postings submitted to the list are "on topic" and which aren't. Try and post a MLM advertising pitch to a moderated list and the list mom will send it to the bit bucket faster than you can say "electron." Compare this to the "Letter from Olga" chain mail letter asking bachelors to send $5 a piece to a PO Box in Bulgaria for the names and addresses of lonely "Russian Brides" that made it's way onto thousands of unmoderated maillists on the Net last year, thanks to some clever hackers. A hack or not, it was nevertheless quite amusing. But it didn't make it past many moderators.
Most maillists are unmoderated, meaning you have to tolerate a certain number of radical thinkers, off-topic discussions, and so on. By far the biggest annoyance is the "Please unsubscribe me's." mentioned abvoe. But overall, mail lists work fabulously. You have a question about connecting a Mac AND a PC to a HP 855 printer? Post it to the Mac-L list (General Macintosh questions and technical support list) and in a day or so you'll see dozens of answers from people who have already done it. They can tell you things like that the HP offers "dual ports" -- Mac and PC -- and does autoswitching Too much advice is sometimes a problem on some of the more popular lists. But you'll definitely get the answers you need, as well as lots of opinions, some correct, some dead-wrong!
Most people who post to maillists use their "sig" or "signature" as a subtle way of advertising their businesses or services. It's nothing obtrusive, just 4-5 lines of text, but a gentle way to let others out there know who you are, and what you do. Posting advertising is verboten on the majority of lists. I've personally gotten dozens of queries about my services from people on maillists I subscribe to who just happened to see my "sig" that mentions I'm a freelance writer when I posted an answer to somebody's question. A few of these queries have even turned into real business.
There's fun to be had on maillists too. You can subscribe to Letterman's top ten maillist, to a joke of the day maillist (which actually delivers more like 50 fresh jokes per day), to sporting maillists, any topic under the sun.
My recommendations? Find a few, select maillists you want to subscribe to. One that's related to the computers and software you use, that you can turn to for help. One that's purely for fun, like joke-of-the-day. And one thats related to a hobby or sport of yours, like bicycling, model railroading, scriptwriting, whatever. If the bandwidth (number of incoming messages) starts getting too high, and you don't have time to read it, unsubscribe and find a smaller list on the same topic. And be sure and use digest mode, if it's available, or you may be quickly overwhelemed by the number of incoming emails from a popular list.