Email discussion lists
You're most likely comfortable with the idea of an email newsletter - where a newsletter is sent to subscribers in the form of an email. These subscribers get the newsletter because they submitted their email address to the newsletter's owners for that specific purpose.
A discussion list operates on similar principles, except the content is not written by an editor or a writer, but by the subscribers ("list members", also sometimes called "the list") themselves.
The idea is that list members can have an ongoing conversation ("discussion") via email. If a subscriber has a topic he'd like to discuss, he sends the list members an email to that effect.
The mechanism for doing this varies from list to list, but it usually involves sending a single email to a special email address set up by whoever manages or owns the list. This email (known as a message or - more usually - a "post") is then sent on automatically to all the subscribers to the discussion list.
If anyone replies to this message, then the reply is also forwarded to all the subscribers. And any comments on the replies are also distributed to everyone.
What you have, then, is an ongoing discussion-by-email which can be viewed by all the list's subscribers.
As you can imagine, this process could get out of hand. If there are thousands of subscribers to a list, and all of them are making comments or raising new discussion topics (known as "threads"), then there'd be a flood of email produced. As if we didn't have enough email already.
Fortunately, this doesn't happen.
First, each discussion list has a clear focus. Examples might be "Branding" or "Star Trek Memorabilia" or "Britney Spears". So discussion is limited to a set topic.
Second, in practice, many subscribers to discussion lists are there to read the discussions, and not to participate in them. (Or they participate only sporadically.)
They subscribe because they value the information, education, and/or entertainment contained within the contributions made by others.
Third, many discussion lists are "moderated." A moderated list is one where each post sent to the list for redistribution to list members must first pass through the hands of a "moderator", an individual who decides whether the post in question is worth sending out.
The moderator has a set of criteria which each post must satisfy before it gets distributed to the list members. You can think of him or her as the list deity, or the quality control manager.
The criteria might include such things as:
- relevancy to the discussion list focus
- usefulness of the comments made
- layout of the email
- grammar
- absence of offensive language
- absence of excessive self-promotion
Lists without moderators (known as "unmoderated lists") can easily degenerate into a mass of low-quality discussions serving little real purpose. Think Kindergarten without a teacher.
Some unmoderated lists, however, do very well through a process of self-regulation, where those who fail to keep to any formal or informal discussion guidelines are "encouraged" by other list members to mend their ways or stop posting.
With people so sensitive to the volume of email they receive, many moderated discussion lists limit the total number of posts distributed ("published") in any one period of time (for example, a maximum of 10 per day).
Lists may also offer subscribers a "digest" option; instead of getting an email every time a post is sent to the list, a list member opts to get all the recent posts stitched together in a single email (the digest), which is sent out perhaps once a day or once a week.
Most people subscribe to the digest version of a list, especially if they have no desire to contribute posts themselves.
Each post itself contains three main parts; the "header", "body" and "signature."
The header is essentially the subject line (the topic of the discussion) and "from" email address (the email address of the sender).
The body is the actual message itself – a question, a response to a discussion thread or some other contribution.
The signature is one or more lines of text at the bottom of a post identifying the sender, and sometimes including some promotional copy.
So a post to a discussion list may appear in a digest like this:
From: mark@email-marketing-reports.com
Subject: Acme Rugs
Has anyone done business with Acme Rugs? I've had a proposal from them, but I'd like to check out their background before answering.
Mark Brownlow
Email Marketing Reports
http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/
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First published: Oct 2008