What is a mail list?

IN THE NORMAL WORLD, a mail list is a list of people who want to receive mail messages from someone. they have been grouped together somehow, so that when some sort of a mailing is to go out, the people on this list get it. Granted, this is a VERY generalized definition.

In the world of the internet, this concept applies with many modifications and additions. An email list is a list of email address (and therefore their owners) which/who are to be sent some of email traffic. Also, an Emaillist is the technical structure in an email server to provide such services.

3 TYPES OF LISTS
Lists come in many flavors, to server many different needs. For instance, they might be a list of people who want to get announcements from a firm or a club- they are not going to reply to or discuss what they get. This is called an ANNOUNCEMENT list. Many clubs and businesses and orginizations use them to inform their memberships, clientelle, and associates- even their employees. This can be a VERY useful bullitin service.

A second sort of list is 'moderated', a benevolent(?) form of censorship. A message to the list is examined by a moderator to insure that it is in keeping with the guideline of the list, and if they approve, it is forwarded on to the list itself. This allows a moderator to screen out inappropriate mesages. When a list has a narrow range of subject matter, a tight focus, this will commonly be used to keep things on the mark. Although it takes up someone's time, it also reliably supresses SPAM.

The third sort, the discussion list, allows people in the list to discuss things without screening the submissions. When someone sends in a message, everyone gets it, anyone can reply to it, and everyone gets a copy of that reply- and can reply to that. It is very much like a usenet group, but is an email service. These are VERY popular, and are a significant social dynamic today on the web. Not everyone has access to usenet, but EVERYONE can access email, even if only in a web service, and there are MANY free webmail services. Even more than moderated lists, these are forming into communities of like minded, or at least like INTRESTED indiviguals, all having a nice conversation about crop circles, cooking, politics, ecology, maintaining web servers, whatever intrests them. Each list has a general theme, and members more or less adhere to that theme.

THIS SITE hosts seceral lists, with different themes; please visit the web interface for our TinyList WebManager and see what is available. We even provide lists on request, and are devloping a system to automate the creation of lists, so you can visit us and host a list here! OF course, if you want to host several lists, you want to load up YOUR OWN TinyList! HINT, HINT!

The services of an automated list server can be quite complex and powerful in the advanced types of list server software. They allow the automation of many actions, making life much easier for the list owner. A really powerful listserver is a valuable servant. This is the primary use of a list server, to simplify the owning of a list.

STRICTLY speaking, a list server is not at all needed! It is possible in most email clients to create a list! you create a directory or a list file with all the addresses in it. When you want to send something to them, you write a letter, and instead of adding a single address, you add THAT LIST NAME. EXACTLY how you do this varies from email client to email client, and SOME don't do it at all. EVERY list function is handled by hand, replies come to the list owner, and (s)he has to send out replies to the list membership. It also ties up your modem line and your email client while it sends out the letter to all these names, and that can take up quite a while for a list of only 100 names!

All this manual work is time consuming, boring, and tiring. Therefore, almost all email lists are admistered and operate with some degree of automation doing the drudge work FOR you.

The simplest list is quite primitive, and has no security features, but at least incoming message automatically go out to all the members. Here are some examples of how a list is built.

(In these examples, I am assuming you server has the domain name 'myplace.com', and that you are using the venerable and almost always present sendmail as a MTA [Mail Transmission Agent].)

For instance, one could go into the server's aliases file and write this:

mylist:me@here.com, you@there.com, him@someplace.net, her@anotherplace.org, me2@wynonahigh.edu, bob@subgenius.com

Notice that ANYONE AT ALL can send a message to mylist@myplace.com, and it will go out to the people listed in that example. ANYONE. Spammers, jerks, people not subscribing, the semiconscious liberation army of God as revised, ANYONE. As sson as a spammer discovers the list, you can count on being buried in spam- he will use it, and SELL it, as such are PRIZED TARGETS for spam, and bring a high price.

NOTE that every person in the list has to be added by hand, and the aliases recompiled with the newaliases command. This quickly becomes burdomesome for the postmaster.

A simple list using sendmail's features uses the include command, which is executed when the aliases file is compiled into sendmail's database with the newaliases command. (NOTE that these are EXAMPLES, and are probably not built correctly for your server, so DON'T go copying with the mouse, making name changes, and pasting into your aliases file- you WILL be dissapointed!)

EXAMPLE:
mylist:":include:/etc/lists/mylist"

This means "in the dir '/etc/lists' is a file called mylist. Read addresses from it and include a copy to EACH address found in this list."

This makes maintence a LITTLE easier. Also, it is somewhat simpler to automate adding and deleting entries in a file that is NOTHING but a list of addresses. It is a simple text file containing addresses, and looks like this:

me@here.com
you@there.com
him@someplace.net
her@anotherplace.org
me2@wynonw.ecu
bob@subgenius.com

that's it. Nothing else is in there. As a convience, the file usually has the name of the list, and MAYBE a name extension as well. In SOME systems of organization, it has a standard name, and lives in a directory which has the name of the list.

SPAM AND HARASSMENT SUPRESSION
SPAM and other junk is very annoying. A decent mailing list manager will allow control of who can post to a list. The most basic options are to limit submission privilige to subscribers, or to the owner only. This means there has to be a program that examines incoming emails and checks to see who they are from, and refuse them if not from an authorized sender, possibly returning a refusal message if they are not authorized.

A minimal security program would compare the source is to insure that it was found in the subscription file before proceeding, but doing this much involves a number of processes, is somewhat complex, and writing a basic and complete mailinglist manages is only slightly harder. TinyList inherently prevents non members from posting to a list; this is our STANDARD mode here, and we hope your site does so as well, 'cause we HATE spam.

LESS WORK FOR MOTHER
Another feature which is very handy is the automation of subscribing and unsubscribing. If we are using the subscriber file method (and almost everyone does) it makes this much simpler.

CRAMMING A MAILBOX FULL SO IT WON'T WORK IS A CRIME
Once the simple subscriber file and basic automated signup process were invented, people discovered folk were getting subscribed to lists BY OTHER PEOPLE to create junk in the mailbox they never asked to get, possibly as a harassment technique or as a Denial Of Service (DOS) attack, by annoying little trolls (yes, we took our mythical people into the internet, and they are alive and well). Therefore, the confirmation method was devloped. This means the server sends a message notifying that someone tried to subscribe the person to the list, and what to do IF they actually wanted this. SOME servers automatically do this, that's just how they work, no option; others offer it as an option, either site wide, or on a per list basis. Usually, the prospective subscriber either has to reply to the message, or click a link provided to visit a web page to confirm that this is their wish- and just delete the message if it is NOT. TinyList works this way, and majordomo CAN work this way if you want to use the confirm opton- and I strongly reccomend you do.

Another feature commonly available is a way to find out information about a list to see if it is something you want to apply to. This is least useful in a private by invitation list, and most useful in a publically offered list. If you want to offer lists to the public, you could dedicate a page describing the lists, or you could create a file containing a short subscription, and offer it somehow, either on the web, or by email with an info command to the list server software.

Many list servers exist, the simplest I have found being TinyList, and the most popular for small to medium sites is majordomo. There are several suites suited for large sites, with powerful features; these are usually licensed with a cost of $2000-$3000 a year. Majordomo is free, as is TinyList and several others (such as mailman). Also, majordomo and TinyList are entirely in python, whereas some others myst be compiled in C or C++, and may also require php and/or other languages and services be added to your server to use them. as practically ALL servers now include Pyton to support CGI scripts, majordomo and TinyList are the smaller site's axe of choice. And for the smallest, and the beginner, TinyList is the choice.

Although majordomo is rather powerful, it is driven by emailed commands, and is somewhat cryptic. There IS a web controller called majorcool, and once you manage to get it installed, it's delicious. For the first timer, we reccomend the simpler TinyList which IS IT'S OWN WEB INTERFACE- just load it into the browser, there it is, a simple form. For the first timer with a small site and modest service demands, it's cherry.