Basics about mailing lists

I didn't find any posts about mailing lists, but I'm not absolutely sure that this subject has not been talked before. There are so many posts already that it's very hard to stay on track of every subject.

Mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or organization to send material to multiple recipients. When internet came more used, electronic mailing lists became popular. It means that a person can send an e-mail to many recipients by using a certain mailing list address. Everyone who's subscribed to the list or has been added by others get the e-mail.

Electronic mailing list usually contains four things: list of e-mail addresses, people or subscribers receiving mail at those addresses, e-mail messages sent to those addresses and a reflector, which is an e-mail address that sends copies of a message it received to all subscribers. They are mostly automated through a special mailing list software and a reflector address that are set up on a server. Messages that are sent to the reflector address are processed by the software and either forwarded to all e-mails in the list or dealt separately (in case that the message contains commands to the software itself).

There are two common types of mailing lists: announcement list and discussion list. Announcement list is also referred as newsletter. Only selected people may post to this list. Discussion list means a list where any subscriber can post messages.

Some mailing lists are open to anyone but some need an approval from the list owner. Biggest security problem that faces mailing lists is spamming. Discussion lists often require that every message is approved by a moderator before it is sent to the list.

In university most courses have mailing lists, as do also for example student organizations. Student groups can create mailing list by going to this website (in Finnish) http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/tkk/asiakaspalvelu/asiakaspalvelupiste/sahkopostilistat.html.

References:

http://www.usabilityfirst.com/about-usability/web-application-design/collaborative-software-groupware/typical-collaborative-software-applications/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailing_list
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_mailing_list