Using Mailing Lists << 2/5 >>
List Address and Admin Addresses
Being built upon Internet email, it lies in the nature of mailing lists that they are used and operated by sending commands, or messages, to special email addresses. Whether you want to subscribe or unsubscribe, or send a mail to all members of the list; every time you send an email and put the list server to work.
While Web interfaces to operate on a mailing list exist for many lists today, plain old email is still a very simple and often more convenient way to use mailing lists.
Two Kinds of Messages...
There are two main types of messages that appear in association with mailing lists: administrative (admin) or command messages and the "content" messages that you want to be distributed to the subscribers of the list.
The command messages are used to send instructions to the mailing list server. Using such commands, you can do such essential things as subscribing or quitting a list, but also suspend delivery to your address (if you are on vacation, for example), or approve a message on a moderated list (if you are the moderator).
The other type of message that occurs on a mailing list is reason that makes command messages necessary: messages containing some form of content that you want all members of the list to receive. If a new subscriber of the lang-dang list wants to introduce herself, she'll send a content(-rich!) message, as will Marina if she has discovered a great new example of "langue dangereuse".
...to Two Kinds of Addresses
The different intentions pursued with the two types of messages correspond to two different addressees: command messages are for the list server only while content messages should go to the list members. It would be at least embarrassing to send a content message to all list subscribers and feeding the server with the latest "Oest Side Story" does not make much sense either.
For almost all mailing lists, (at least) two different email addresses correspond to the two addressees. Content messages are sent to the "list address" while command messages often go to the address of the list server, the server address.
The list address may be something like "lang-dang@phenom.org" while you can reach the server for sending commands to it under "majordomo@phenom.org". Sometimes, a separate address for commands for a specific list (a mailing list server may host many different lists) is available, for example "lang-dang-request@phenom.org". There may also be special addresses for executing commands on the server, like "lang-dang-subscribe@phenom.org" to subscribe to the lang-dang list or "lang-dang-unsubscribe@phenom.org" to unsubscribe.
Introduction
List Address and Server Address
Subscribing
Sending Messages and Replies
Unsubscribing
