A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients.
Discussion lists provide some advantages over typical web forums, so they are still used in various projects, notably Git and Debian.
Salting (or seeding) their lists enables them to compare delivery times, especially when time-of-year affects arrival delays.
Unscrupulous renters may attempt to bypass salts by renting several lists and merging them to find common, valid addresses.
Each has its strengths, although a 2022 article claimed that compared to email, "direct mail still brings in the lion's share of revenue for most organizations.
The key advantage of a mailing list over things such as web-based discussion is that as the new message becomes available they are immediately delivered to the participants' mailboxes.
[10] The genealogy of mailing lists as a communication tool between scientists can be traced back to the times of the fledgling Arpanet.
It is pivotal to the structure and topicality of debates within mailing lists as an arena, or public sphere in Habermas wording.
The flame wars (as the liveliest episodes) give valuable and unique information to historians to comprehend what is at stake in the communities gathered around lists.
[13] Topics include TV series fandom,[14] online culture,[15] or scientific practices[16] among many other academic studies.
Mailing lists archives are a unique opportunity for historians to explore interactions, debates, even tensions that reveal a lot about communities.
Companies sending out promotional newsletters have the option of working with whitelist mail distributors, which agree to standards and high fines from ISPs should any of the opt-in subscribers complain.
Most legitimate list holders provide their customers with listwashing and data deduplication service regularly for no charge or a small fee.