Talk:Electronic mailing list

Can Spam
Something should be written about US law regarding the Can Spam act, and how companies must comply. To my knowledge companies in the US are no longer allowed to sell actual e-mail addresses, but if you pay them (InfoUSA for example) they will spam on your behalf. InfoUSA owns the e-list, but cannot legally sell it. This is unlike regular mailing lists since companies can still sell physical addresses. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.214.248.31 (talk) 17:09, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

thread indentation
how can the mailing list or email software technically decide how to indent the threads correctly? -- Hahih (talk) 12:59, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Moderation
Moderator approval is usually employed to keep a high average quality of posts and weed out spam.

I don't think "usually" is true for this. Tho moderator approval is the most sure way of preventing Spam from being distributed, it can be a lot of work and slows down the discussion. Hence I don't think it is "usually" done tho I don't have any statistics.

The most commonly used way of preventing Spam (IMHO any decent list except the most private should use it) is to require posts to come from subscribed addresses.

About the term "listserv"
The term "electronic mailing list" is too cumbersome to be used widely in day to day use. No other term has become widely used. I sense that "listserv" (Note lower case "l" ) is becoming used generically for both the servers and individual lists. Like Kleenex I think the term is slipping into generic use and I support this. (The Listserv Wikipedia entry notes the use (for servers) and discourages it.)
 * I don't think it is. Yahoo calls them groups or email groups, Bugtraq is referred to as a mailing list, in Debian jargon, they're called just lists or mailing lists, ... --Joy  &#91;shallot&#93;

BTW the article does not mention the main advantage for listservs. Mail comes TO participants (assuming they check their mail) rather than them having to come to the discussion. This is a huge advantage for many topics. For the largest discussions (lots of messages) it is also a disadvantage.

Fred Olson Communications for Justice http://justcomm.org


 * "Listserv" is a product name. The most common term in the IETF (which relies very heavily on them) is "list server". And for "electronic mailing list", one says "mailing list"; people tend to forget that there ever existed any other kind. --Alvestrand 02:40, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

OSS
Pretty much every open source software I've seen uses a mailing list like GNU Mailman. Could be mentioned.

Personally, I hate them. There must be some good reasons why they are used? — Omegatron 03:36, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Seeking feedback on Google Groups article
Hello. I wrote an article about a related topic, Google Groups. As a new Wikipedia writer, I would appreciate any feedback on my article. Please help me by posting your feedback at the Article Feedback Desk. If you wrote an article and are seeking feedback on it, please post your article at the Article Feedback Desk as well. If you could suggest better ways for me to seek feedback on my article, do leave a note at my talk page. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:14, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Merging with E-mail groups article
Personally, I think the E-mail groups article should just be deleted. It has a couple of key facts wrong (email lists were much more popular pre-web, not "the late 1990s"), and Yahoo! Groups were around (as Yahoo! Clubs) before they bought eGroups. The only salvagable paragraph of the three in the article is the last one, and that's pretty badly written. Stev0 01:54, 11 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Merge as in "redirect". --Alvestrand 02:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Merge as in "redirect". --Vijay Barve

Commercial links?
We eschew commercial links for fear of allowing entries to act like advertisements, but I see recent additions to #Mailing list services pointing to Yahoo, Google and MSN Groups, along with other providers. Anyone object if we re-word that section to avoid mention of any particular vendor? We should be descriptive without showing favouritism by providing examples. --ghoti 05:48, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm also very surprised for such a non-neutral section as "Mailing list services". Yahoo, Google and MSN are huge commercial companies, and I saw many complaining about their privacy policy. RockyRoad29 (talk) 10:16, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Especially since one of the particular services was added by the CEO of that company himself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.68.176.47 (talk) 02:44, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree also. It is obvious that in any open discussion such as this there will be those who blatantly attempt to insert biased comments to further their own agendas. As a retiree, I have no reason to push for any particular company and feel that there is absolutely no need to name any such. Comments should only contain generalities. [Robert H Mercer]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.202.66.34 (talk) 04:24, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Merge with Mailing list
User:16%40r added a tag to merge this article with Mailing list. However, looking over the page history, it appears that this article was deliberately split because non-electronic mailing lists should have their own article. I have not read either article carefully, so maybe there needs to be cleanup/separation of these articles, or this distinction is no longer needed. Wrs1864 (talk) 11:33, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree - I was happy to find the Electronic Mailing List topic because I don't want to read about how to purchase e-mails for spamming. I need a service/software package to keep people in touch. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.1.16.126 (talk) 14:03, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I am deleting the tag. It has been a year and a half and apparently no one cares.75.214.248.31 (talk) 17:05, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I do care. This has been very confusing as everyone refers to "electronic mailing list" as just "mailing list". Not sure if I should just go ahead and do it. — Kennyluck (talk) 02:07, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm for the merge as long as it is done well. Marcus   Qwertyus   04:10, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

I deleted the tag as this has gone stale and I don't quite see consensus to do this. I wouldn't object if someone did the merge, though. Post on my talk page for instructions on how to merge properly. Ego White Tray (talk) 02:58, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

History
I don't see much about the first appearance of electronic mailing lists. Here two examples for long term lists (started in 1991): Others? Bumbulski (talk) 05:15, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
 * http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/
 * http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-user/

History
I have added a paragraph about the history of mailing lists with three academic references (disclaimer : I am one of the authors of two references). The text has been adapted from the third reference, which has been published under a CC-BY licence, and from the Computational Chemistry List article.Alexandre Hocquet (talk) 04:14, 12 January 2019 (UTC)