Your email account is more than just an electronic post office. You can also use your email account to join global discussion groups and carry on conversations with people about any of your favorite topics.

A discussion group on the Net is simply called an Internet Mailing List. Think of it as an extended version of a monthly PTA, Scout, or Girl's Club meeting, or a library book reading. Do you belong to a stamp, coin, or other club that meets monthly?

Another way to look at it is like a public soapbox with a world audience. There are 80,000 Net mailings lists covering every subject you can (and can't) imagine. New ones are created almost every day.

Unlike your local meeting that is confined to a set time and location every month, an Internet mailing list discussion goes on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It doesn't matter what the weather is, and you don't have to worry about parking. Moreover, there are no geographical constraints on who can participate. You can belong to a list that has members from more than 140 countries.

How do you become a member of a mailing list? You use your email account and send an email to an administrative address that subscribes you to the list. In the subject or body of your email, you type in SUBSCRIBE "name of the list" and your email address, or a variant of that.

However, when you want to participate in a discussion you send the email to a different address, the actual "list" or discussion address. The list server software will take your posting and automatically send it to everyone who has subscribed to the list. It could be 10 people or 40,000. Don't you love automation!

There are three basic kinds of mailings lists: unmoderated, moderated, and announcement. Mailing lists are free and most of them are unregulated for the most part. Some lists are moderated. A moderated list means the list administrator reads the submission first and decides whether it's relevant to the group. It may or may not see the light of day. Moderated lists tend to stay on track more often.

Unmoderated (unregulated, anything goes) lists may have so much "noise" in them that it isn't worth the digital space they take up. On the other hand, they can be quite "lively" in their discussion.

An announcement list is one where you periodically want to inform people of some new event, news, software upgrade, or whatever. It usually is a one way mailing. You send it to all the subscribers and they normally cannot respond.

No matter what kind of list you belong to, you can always unsubscribe from it. It's easy. Well sort of.

When you first subscribe to a list you are sent instructions, by return email, that gives you the various administrative addresses and procedures to sign on and off a mailing list. Most people don't save it and you will often see the words "unsubscribe" posted in the actual discussion list. This is annoying and is bound to get you flamed if you do it (lots of hate mail). Do everyone a favor and save those instructions, please. If you simply can't memorize this address:

http://www.cru.fr/listes/apropos/robots.html.

It will give you the unsubscribe command for most mailing list software.

Most list servers give you the option to subscribe to a "digest" version of the mailing list. If you belong to a list with a lot of traffic, you WILL want a digest version. If not, expect to find hundreds of individual emails flooding your email account. This will make you and your Internet provider very upset. The list server will create a digest by taking all of the day's or week's posting and send it you as one downloadable file -- a digest -- in your email box.. You can download it and read it at your pleasure.

There are many versions of list server software but they all do the same job. There are commercial versions of List server software as well as Freeware and Shareware versions that are just as good. If you're interested in comparing them, check out Brian Edmonds "Internet Mailing List Providers" (http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/edmonds/usenet/ml providers.html) Web site.

How do you find out if there is a mailing list you want to join? It would take a while to sort through 80,000 mailing lists but a few nice Net people have created searchable databases that are available on the Web. One of the best, and oldest, is Stephanie De Silva's "Publicly Available Mailing Lists" Web site (www.neosoft.com/internet/paml/). You can search an alphabetical listing or by subject area, or simply type in a topic in the search engine. Instructions on subscribing are also presented.

Now if by chance there is not a mailing list that interests you or you can't find the one on the one legged hairy Emu that you know millions want to talk about, why not start a mailing list yourself? It won't cost you anything but your time.

There are several mailing list Web sites that will allow you to have your very own mailing list, but there is a catch. These services allow the use of advertising banners or messages in your posting or support page, so you must agree to allow advertising on your list. It's a small price to pay for a free service really. You don't have to read the ads, and believe or not, sometime you will find good deals.

One of the better free services is ListBot (www.listbot.com). Listbot gives you a choice of a moderated, unmoderated, or announcement mailing list. You also get a free Web page for support, forms, automatic archives, and more.

One other form of mailing list not mentioned above are electronic newsletters and magazines which we will discuss in the near future. Yes, you can even get newsletters and magazines delivered to your email account for free.

In the meantime, join (or create) a mailing list and contribute your two cents worth to the world dialogue.

©1999 Don Rittner

Don is the author of several Net books. His latest, The iMac Book (Coriolis Group) is for all Macintosh users. Reach Don at drittner@aol.com, or PO Box 50216, Albany, NY 12205. He's sitting by his iMac waiting for your email.