mailing list

5 definitions found

mailing list - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :

  mailing list \mailing list\ n.
     A list of names and addresses to which advertising,
     solicitations of money, or other materials material sent in
     large quantities is mailed; -- it is usually used by
     comercial or charitable organizations. Mailing lists are
     often sold by organizations to other organizations, and are
     frequently used for targeted mailing, i. e., mailing to
     groups of people who are more likely htan the general
     population to respond as desired to the message in the mail.
     [WordNet 1.5 +PJC]

mailing list - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) :

  mailing list
      n 1: a list of names and addresses to which advertising material
           is mailed

mailing list - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  mailing list
  
     <messaging> (Often shortened in context to "list") An
     electronic mail address that is an alias (or macro, though
     that word is never used in this connection) which is expanded
     by a mail exploder to yield many other e-mail addresses.
     Some mailing lists are simple "reflectors", redirecting mail
     sent to them to the list of recipients.  Others are filtered
     by humans or programs of varying degrees of sophistication;
     lists filtered by humans are said to be "moderated".
  
     The term is sometimes used, by extension, for the people who
     receive e-mail sent to such an address.
  
     Mailing lists are one of the primary forms of hacker
     interaction, along with Usenet.  They predate Usenet,
     having originated with the first UUCP and ARPANET
     connections.  They are often used for private
     information-sharing on topics that would be too specialised
     for or inappropriate to public Usenet groups.  Though some
     of these maintain almost purely technical content (such as the
     Internet Engineering Task Force mailing list), others (like
     the "sf-lovers" list maintained for many years by Saul Jaffe)
     are recreational, and many are purely social.  Perhaps the
     most infamous of the social lists was the eccentric bandykin
     distribution; its latter-day progeny, lectroids and
     tanstaafl, still include a number of the oddest and most
     interesting people in hackerdom.
  
     Mailing lists are easy to create and (unlike Usenet) don't
     tie up a significant amount of machine resources (until they
     get very large, at which point they can become interesting
     torture tests for mail software).  Thus, they are often
     created temporarily by working groups, the members of which
     can then collaborate on a project without ever needing to meet
     face-to-face.
  
     There are several programs to automate mailing list
     maintenance, e.g. Listserv, Listproc, Majordomo.
  
     Requests to subscribe to, or leave, a mailing list should
     ALWAYS be sent to the list's "-request" address (e.g.
     ietf-request@cnri.reston.va.us for the IETF mailing list).
     This prevents them being sent to all recipients of the list
     and ensures that they reach the maintainer of the list, who
     may not actually read the list.
  
     [Jargon File]
  
     (2001-04-27)
  

mailing list - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  mailing list
   n.
  
     (often shortened in context to list)
  
     1. An email address that is an alias (or macro, though that word
     is never used in this connection) for many other email addresses.
  Some
     mailing lists are simple reflectors, redirecting mail sent to them to
     the list of recipients. Others are filtered by humans or programs of
     varying degrees of sophistication; lists filtered by humans are said
     to be moderated.
  
     2. The people who receive your email when you send it to such an
     address.
  
     Mailing lists are one of the primary forms of hacker interaction,
     along with Usenet. They predate Usenet, having originated with the
     first UUCP and ARPANET connections. They are often used for private
     information-sharing on topics that would be too specialized for or
     inappropriate to public Usenet groups. Though some of these maintain
     almost purely technical content (such as the Internet Engineering
  Task
     Force mailing list), others (like the `sf-lovers' list maintained for
     many years by Saul Jaffe) are recreational, and many are purely
     social. Perhaps the most infamous of the social lists was the
     eccentric bandykin distribution; its latter-day progeny, lectroids
  and
     tanstaafl, still include a number of the oddest and most interesting
     people in hackerdom.
  
     Mailing lists are easy to create and (unlike Usenet) don't tie up a
     significant amount of machine resources (until they get very large,
  at
     which point they can become interesting torture tests for mail
     software). Thus, they are often created temporarily by working
  groups,
     the members of which can then collaborate on a project without ever
     needing to meet face-to-face. Much of the material in this lexicon
  was
     criticized and polished on just such a mailing list (called
     `jargon-friends'), which included all the co-authors of Steele-1983.
  

mailing list - Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 :

  29 Moby Thesaurus words for "mailing list":
     PP, RD, RFD, airmail, book post, correspondence, direct mail,
     direct-mail selling, express, fourth-class mail, frank,
     halfpenny post, junk mail, letter post, letters, mail,
     mail-order selling, newspaper post, parcel post, post, post day,
     registered mail, rural delivery, rural free delivery, sea mail,
     seapost, special delivery, special handling, surface mail