More of this Feature • Part 1: Order to the Chaos • Part 2: Moderated vs Anarchic • Part 3: Discussion vs Announcement • Part 5: Individual-Message vs Digest

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Open House

Marina's lang-dang list, like most mailing list you will get in touch with, was "open"; "open" means open for subscription to anyone. Everybody interested could subscribe or unsubscribe the lang-dang list as they liked it and as often as they liked.

For VIPs Only

To the open lang-dang list, a lot of people subscribed. A lot of people means a lot of brains. A lot of brains means a lot of ideas. To collect all the information about dangerous language(s), Marina set up a Web site, as we've already mentioned.

The site grew and the team working on the pages with it. The really needed an efficient way to communicate with each other. Of course, Marina chose email. She set up a mailing list for the people working on the Web site.

To this list, the lang-dang-mang list, nobody can subscribe themselves. Only Marina as list maintainer can add people. Whenever a new member joins the group of dangerous language experts working on the Web site devoted to this theme, Marina subscribes her or him to the list. If somebody leaves, she unsubscribes the parting member. Thus, at any time, the people doing the actual work have the actual discussion and dialog, without third parties intervening or just listening (called "lurking" for mailing lists).

Summary

While everybody can subscribe to an open mailing list, a closed mailing list is a discussion forum for a limited and defined set of people. Only the list maintainer can add new members to or remove old members from the list.

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