Student Resources

Using Computers and Internet Resources

Internet Basics

• What Is a Mailing List?
• Who uses Mailing lists?
• How do Mailing lists work?
• How do I join a Mailing list?

A mailing list is often called a discussion list, e-mail conference, and listserv. The basic purpose of a mailing list is to provide a network through which the e-mail messages of each participant can be distributed to everyone subscribed to the mailing list. By distributing each e-mail message to every list participant, the mailing list users can respond to questions, statements, and the like--thereby creating an on-going discussion or conversation.

Most mailing lists are topic-specific and encourage collaboration and networking among their participants. And the topics of mailing lists are as diverse as the participants who join them. The mailing lists you will find mentioned in On the Net are educational discussion lists that focus on writing and writing instruction, but numerous other mailing lists have been developed to address the interests and concerns of other academic disciplines and occupations, popular culture interests (such as Star Trek and Barbie), parenting, sports, and more.

The participants of mailing lists may consist of people within a particular institution (such as a university or business) or may include people from around the world. What brings these people together is their interest in a particular subject. But you can be certain that the people on any particular mailing list represent a variety backgrounds and experiences.

Participants bring to the mailing list their diverse educational and personal experiences; cultures and ethnicities; and political, social, and religious values. And for this reason, it is very important for participants to observe the standards, or manners, set forth as netiquette, or Internet etiquette.

Mailing lists are made possible through the automated administration of a server, or host computer, that receives and processes subscription and cancellation requests (along with a variety of other commands) submitted through e-mail and globally distributes the submitted e-mail messages to subscribed participants. This server is maintained by a list owner, the person who came up with the idea for the mailing list, or by a technical operator at the university or business that houses the mailing list computer. In addition, some mailing lists are moderated: in other words, the list owner or another list member manages the type of the discussion that takes place on the mailing list, offering help to participants and making sure that participants are staying on topic and observing netiquette.

If you are interested in joining a mailing list, be sure to find out about the list's scope of discussion topics and membership (a few academic lists are restricted to instructors; others are restricted to students). Descriptions of mailing lists are available from on-line indexes such as those in Discussion List Indexes. And the mailing/discussion lists collected in On the Net include brief annotations so that you can choose the lists that best suit your interests.

To subscribe to most discussion lists, you simply send a message to the list's mail server, or host computer, leaving the subject line blank and including a brief message. The subject line of the message is determined by the type of host computer. Most mailing lists are run on one of three basic types of mailing list processors: Listserv, Listproc, and Majordomo.

Listserv and Listproc processors require a subscription message in the following format:

subscribe

For example, to subscribe to the student and instructor mailing list, NetCrit, a mailing list for discussing literary criticism and theory, you would send your message as follows:

TO: listproc2@bgu.edu SUBJECT: _________________________ subscribe NetCrit Jane Doe

Note that mailing lists on Majordomo processors (such as those provided by the Spoon Collective) require that you write the message as follows:

subscribe

For example, to subscribe to Women-Writing-Culture, you would write your message as such:

subscribe Women-Writing-Culture jdoe@university.edu

For your convenience, the discussions lists collected in On the Net allow you to send your subscription message through our site. Just click on the name of the mailing list you would like to join; you will then be taken to a page that asks you fill out the necessary information for subscription, and your message is automatically formatted and sent to the mailing list processor.

As soon as your message has been processed, you will usually receive a verification message from the mailing list. And often the mailing list will also send you a list of useful mailing list commands and policies and procedures for posting messages to the list.