Sändlistor - Översiktlig introduktion
Vad är en sändlista?
En sändlista är en distributionslista som ger en grupp prenumeranter möjlighet att automatiskt motta alla meddelanden som skickas till listan: varje meddelande som skickas till listan sänds vidare till de övriga prenumeranterna. Den som prenumererar på sändlistan har möjlighet att skicka meddelanden, svara på dem eller enbart läsa dem utan att delta.
Specialfall:
- Det är ibland möjligt att sända meddelanden till en sändlista utan att prenumerera på den. Du måste dock prenumerera på en lista för att motta meddelanden som skickas till den.
- It is sometimes impossible to send messages to the list even though you are actually subscribed to it: it is the case for announcement lists, which are used to transmit information from a unique sender to a large number of recipients.
Interest of mailing lists
People subscribe to a mailing list (sometimes abbreviated in ML) to be informed about a particular topic and to take part in exchanges about it. Examples are:
- mailing list for all the employees of a company;
- mailing list reserved to the participants in a project;
- mailing list dedicated to a class of students;
- mailing list about the latest news in computer security;
- mailing list of mutual aid between handymen;
- mailing list restricted to a family and dedicated to the organization of large family gatherings;
- and so on!
Types of mailing lists
There are thousands of mailing lists of all kinds on the Internet: public or private, free or not, with subscription subject to conditions or not, etc. Those lists may have from a dozen up to several thousand members.
According to the way they work, we can distinguish between two types of lists:
- Announcements lists allow subscribers to receive messages without being allowed to post some themselves. In fact, those messages are newsletters: electronic magazines, daily services (daily horoscope, daily weather report, daily security alert, etc.), update notices about a website, etc. With this type of mailing list, the information flows from a unique sender to a large number of recipients.
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Discussion lists allow all subscribers to take part in exchanges. Those lists can be moderated or not:
- In a moderated discussion list, messages are transmitted to all subscribers after approval by one of the list moderators. Moderation is a token of quality for the list. For example, it ensures that subscribers will not receive off-topic messages, unsolicited commercial messages (spams), messages containing large attachments, etc.
- In a non moderated discussion list, messages are transmitted to all subscribers as soon as the mailing list management robot receives them.