People that share a common interest are inclined to discuss their hobby or interest at every available opportunity. One modern way is by using a mailing list - usually an email address that redistributes all the mail sent to it out to a list of addresses. Administrative tasks are often handled (this is usually peripheral to real jobs and real work) by an individual that responds to the suffix -request of the mailing list. For example, the Sun Managers mailing list has the address of sun-managers@eecs.nwu.edu. A request to be added or deleted from the mailing list would be addressed to sun-managers-request@eecs.nwu.edu.
Exercise caution when replying to a message sent to the mailing list. If you wish to respond to the author of a message only, make sure that the address your replying to is that of the author and not the mailing list address. Likewise, you need to ensure that a message intended for the mailing list is going to the right address and not to an individual.
A list of the currently available mailing list file from ftp.nisc.sri.com called 'interest-groups' under the /netinfo directory. It's updated fairly regularly and it's very large, around 700K, so only get it every once in a while. Another list is posted to the newsgroup news.lists about every two weeks.
BITNET has an automated system for maintaining discussion lists called LISTSERV. Areas of interest are wide and varied. To obtain a list of the available BITNET lists send email to LISTSERV@BITNIC.BITNET with the body of the message containing the command: list global. Do this sparingly, as the reply is quite large.
To subscribe to a mail list, send a message to LISTSERV@BITNIC.BITNET
with the body of the message containing the following command:
subscribe
The listserv will acknowledge your subcribe-request and let you know
that your request has been forwarded to the system on which the list is
actually maintained. To cancel receipt of the list, send a message to
LISTSERV address with the body of the message containing the following
command:
Once you've subscribed to a Listserv, you can obtain help by sending a
message to the listserv with the body of the message containing the word:
help
RGFN User's Guide Copyright 1995: You may copy this guide and
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