Community Rooms: Definitions of Terms

Mailing Lists

A mailing list is simply a list of email addresses of people interested in a particular subject. Mailing lists can include as few as two people or as many as thousands. The Internet has thousands of different mailing lists on almost any subject imaginable, including many involving disabilities. Organizations or even individuals can create and maintain new mailing lists if one doesn’t already exist for a topic. To receive a list of disability-related lists, send a message to rowley@waisman.wisc.edu.  

Each mailing list has its own distribution address, which looks just like a regular email address. All you have to do to get on a mailing list is to "subscribe" by sending email to the list administrator. This administrator may be a real person or an automated list maintenance program. One such program is called LISTSERV (short for List Server). Once you subscribe, your email address will be added to the mailing list, and you’ll start receiving messages from other list members. You may reply to these messages or start new discussions. Any message you send to the email list address will be automatically distributed to every member of that list. Alternatively, you may choose not to participate actively by sending messages at all; you can just "listen" to the discussions (sometimes called lurking). (More information on LISTSERVs) 

So, to subscribe to a mailing list on the Internet, you usually send a subscription request to the list’s administrative address, which is distinct from the list’s distribution address. For example, one Internet mailing list on Down Syndrome is named DOWN-SYN. The administrative address for this mailing list is listserv@listserv.nodak.edu . The following screen shows the email message user colantonio would send to subscribe to the DOWN-SYN mailing list:

After subscribing, you will receive a standard letter of welcome (via email) telling you about the list. From that time on, you will receive all mail (postings) sent to the list by its members. You may just follow the discussions (lurk) or join in on them. If you respond, you can send your response to the whole list (in which case, all members of the list will receive it), or to just an individual on the list. For example, to post a message to the entire membership of the Down Syndrome mailing list, you would send an email message to down-syn@listserv.nodak.edu.  You can get off the mailing list (unsubscribe) at any time by simply sending an email message to the list administrator (listserv@listserv.nodak.edu)   with the command SIGNOFF DOWN-SYN. You can also get a listing of all the members of a list and their email addresses.  

   
   Project for New Mexico Children and Youth Who Are Deaf-Blind
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