Introduction to Internet Mailing Lists
Mailing lists allow companies or individuals to quickly and easily communicate by using one email address to reach many recipients. These lists are usually moderated, and some lists allow other users to send messages as well.
Popular Mailing Lists
Listserv: Listserv are the most common type of mailing lists, also known as Bitnet lists.
Listproc: Listproc are mostly run by universities and schools.
Majordomo: Majordomo is a program for automating the internet mailing lists management. Subscribers send all commands to majordomo via email to handle the list maintenance.
Mailing Lists Types
There are three types of mailing lists: moderated discussion lists, unmoderated discussion lists, and announcement lists.
Announcement Lists: Only the administrator of the list send email to all other member in the mailing list. This type of list is also called receive-only lists.
Moderated Mailing Lists: In this type, all the messages are scanned and filtered with respect to the mailing lists standard by the moderator before posting.
Unmoderated mailing lists: In this type, the messages are unfiltered and uncontrolled. Anyone from the mailing list can send messages to all other members.