(often shortened in context to list)
1. An {email} address that is an alias (or {macro}, though that word
is never used in this connection) for many other email addresses.
Some mailing lists are simple reflectors, redirecting mail sent to
them to the list of recipients. Others are filtered by humans or
programs of varying degrees of sophistication; lists filtered by
humans are said to be moderated.
2. The people who receive your email when you send it to such an
address.
Mailing lists are one of the primary forms of hacker interaction,
along with {Usenet}. They predate Usenet, having originated with the
first UUCP and ARPANET connections. They are often used for private
information-sharing on topics that would be too specialized for or
inappropriate to public Usenet groups. Though some of these maintain
almost purely technical content (such as the Internet Engineering
Task Force mailing list), others (like the `sf-lovers' list
maintained for many years by Saul Jaffe) are recreational, and many
are purely social. Perhaps the most infamous of the social lists was
the eccentric bandykin distribution; its latter-day progeny,
lectroids and tanstaafl, still include a number of the oddest and
most interesting people in hackerdom.
Mailing lists are easy to create and (unlike Usenet) don't tie up a
significant amount of machine resources (until they get very large,
at which point they can become interesting torture tests for mail
software). Thus, they are often created temporarily by working
groups, the members of which can then collaborate on a project
without ever needing to meet face-to-face. Much of the material in
this lexicon was criticized and polished on just such a mailing list
(called `jargon-friends'), which included all the co-authors of
Steele-1983.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {backbone cabal}{forum}{newsgroup}{ping}{post}]