Announcement List or Discussion List?
The most popular mailing list packages are
Majordomo
and
Listserv.
Lyris is
another good one. All of these can automatically handle the
ongoing business of adding new members, and removing those
who wish to leave. Once you learn to use the more advanced
features, you can do quite a lot of sophisticated and very
useful things. If you're serious about having a mailing list,
be sure someone on your team takes the time to learn your
mailing list software thoroughly. All these products are
very complex, and the value of your mailing list can be
vastly increased if you use the advanced features correctly.
There are basically two kinds of mailing lists: announcement
lists and discussion lists. An announcement list is set up
so that only the list owner can send messages to the list.
It's appropriate for things like sending out press releases,
new product announcements, or announcements of new content on
your Web site. Announcement lists are pretty simple, and
require little maintenance. You simply send out a message
whenever you please. Since the mailing list software is set
up so that it isn't possible for anyone other than yourself
to send to the list, the potential for problems is small.
A discussion list is one which allows anyone to send
messages to the list. It is appropriate when you want to
encourage an open, ongoing discussion on a particular topic.
A discussion mailing list is conceptually the same thing as
a Usenet Newsgroup, but in a way it's more convenient,
because the user doesn't have to download the messages -
they show up in your mailbox, to be read or discarded as
you please.
Like anything that's open to the public, a discussion list
requires a good bit of ongoing maintenance. The best and
most useful lists are those that have a good list
administrator, who makes sure that things keep running
smoothly, and that the "signal-to-noise ratio" stays
favorable.
Once you've selected a mailing list software package, and
set up and tested one or more mailing lists, the thing to
do is to promote the list(s), and try to get as many people
to join as possible. Every mailing list should have a
Web page associated with it, which explains what the
subject matter of the list is, explains any rules and
guidelines for posting, and describes in detail how to
go about subscribing and unsubscribing (for an example,
see
Mailing List Sign Up Form - Web Developer's Journal. This
Web page should be submitted to the appropriate search
engines and directories. There are also a couple of
directories of mailing lists, to which you should submit
your new list. See:
Yahoo! Computers and Internet:Internet:Mailing Lists:Web Directories
Liszt, the mailing list directory
Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists
