1. A mailing list is a special address that, when posted to, automatically sends email to a long list of other addresses. You usually subscribe to a mailing list by sending some specially formatted email or by requesting a subscription from the mailing list manager. Once you have subscribed to a list, any email you post to the list will be sent to every other subscriber, and every other subscriber's posts to the list will be sent to you. There are mostly three types of mailing lists: the majordomo type, the listserv type, and the *-request type. From Rute-Users-Guide