What's a mailing list?
Internet mailing lists aren't for ads, as some people mistakenly believe. Send any ads to the mailing lists in Liszt, and demons will come and pull out your toenails. No, Internet mailing lists are (usually) just communities of people sitting around discussing one of their favorite topics by e-mail. For example, fans of bluegrass music can join BGRASS-L, and meet other bluegrass fans, and talk about bluegrass via e-mail.
Internet mailing lists have been around since about 1975. It was the first and original type of online community, pre-dating Usenet, IRC, and the rest of the gang.
The mailing list format lends itself to calm, thoughtful, literate, mature discussion, where relationships between the list members actually grow and deepen over an extended period of time. Most Internet experts feel that the mailing list format is the most civilized type of online community.
So those are discussion groups. Another common type of Internet mailing list is the newsletter or announcement format, where a single writer (the listowner or moderator) broadcasts a periodical e-mail to a willing audience (and the audience doesn't participate directly.) You'll find lots of good newsletter-style mailing lists in Liszt too, like Keith Dawson's famous TBTF, "Tasty Bits from the Technology Front".
Contrary to the name, there is actually very little "news" in the newsgroups. Newsgroups are basically an electronic bulletin board. Items are posted and can be responded to via email. Depending upon your online-service or Internet Service Provider (ISP), you should have access to over 30,000 newsgroups. With this many newsgroups there is probably at least one out there for everyone.
USENET, the international newsgroup network, is much like the Internet itself...no single agency is in charge. The system connects computers from around the world. The system administrators decide which newsgroups to supply. Very few systems supply all of the newsgroups.
There are a couple of methods for finding the newsgroups that will be of interest to you. If you are using the Netscape Navigator (in the news window) go to options and select Show All Newsgroups. The newsreader will then display all the newsgroups that are available from your service provider. Be aware, this may take a few minutes to complete. A list of all newsgroups will then appear on the left side of the screen. Simply click on the title of the newsgroups to obtain all of the messages. (The options menu will give you several choices for the sorting of these messages.)
Another method for finding newsgroups is searching by subject. There are a few Web sites that can assist you with the search. We recommend the following:
Favorite Web Sites
Liszt (mailing lists)
Enter a word or phrase to search the largest mailing list directory. Over 80,000 entries, including 148 computer-related lists.List of Lists (mailing lists)
ListServe (mailing lists)
Google Groups (newsgroups)
Enter a word or phrase to search the largest newsgroups directory. There are over 30,000 USENet newsgroups.You can view newsgroups directly from the link at Google Groups. However Netscape Navigator/Communicator has an excellent newsreader integrated into the browser that provide easier reading of the message threads.
Newsgroups are arranged in subgroups which makes them easier to list. A newsgroup name starts with a subgroup header followed by one or more descriptive words, separated by "."
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's) are an important part of USENET culture. These list and answer the kinds of questions that beginner's ask, and provide a good introduction to each group. They are often an excellent source of information on the subject matter of the group.
It is highly recommended that you read the groups FAQ before posting a message.