E-MAIL DISCUSSION GROUPS

One of the benefits of the Internet is the opportunity it offers to people worldwide to communicate via e-mail. The Internet is home to a large community of individuals who carry out active discussions organized around topic-oriented forums distributed by e-mail. These are administered by software programs.
Probably the most common program is the listservr.
A great variety of topics are covered by listservrs, many of them academic in nature. When you subscribe to a listservr, messages from other subscribers are automatically sent to your electronic mailbox. You subscribe to a listservr by sending an e-mail message to a computer program called a listserver. Listservers are located on computer networks throughout the world. This program
handles subscription information and distributes messages to and from subscribers. You must have a e-mail account to participate in a listservr discussion group. Visit Tile.net at /http://tile.net/ to see
an example of a site that offers a searchablecollection of e-mail discussion groups.
Majordomo and Listproc are two other programs that administer e-mail discussion groups. The commands for subscribing to and managing your list memberships are similar to those of listserv.