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Concept
Mailing list
Summary
A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the list."
Transmission may be paper-based or electronic. Each has its strengths, although a 2022 article claimed that "direct mail still brings in the lion's share of revenue for most organizations."
At least two types of mailing lists can be defined:
an announcement list is closer to the original sense, where a "mailing list" of people was used as a recipient for newsletters, periodicals or advertising. Traditionally this was done through the postal system, but with the rise of email, the electronic mailing list became popular. This type of list is used primarily as a one-way conduit of information and may only be "posted to" by selected people. This may also be referred to by the term newsletter. Newsletter and promotional emailing lists are employed in various sectors as parts of direct marketing campaigns.
a 'discussion list' allows subscribing members (sometimes even people outside the list) to post their own items which are broadcast to all of the other mailing list members. Recipients may answer in a similar fashion, thus, actual discussion and information exchanges can occur. Mailing lists of this type are usually topic-oriented (for example, politics, scientific discussion, health problems, joke contests), and the topic may range from extremely narrow to "whatever you think could interest us". In this they are similar to Usenet newsgroups, another form of discussion group that may have an aversion to off-topic messages.
Historically mailing lists preceded email/web forums; both can provide analogous functionalities. When used in that fashion, mailing lists are sometimes known as discussion lists or discussion forums. Discussion lists provide some advantages over typical web forums, so they are still used in various projects, notably Git and Debian.
Official source
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