mailing list

mailing list n.  (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.