The American maintains several e-mail “lists” to facilitate communications among our members. During the years that these lists have been developed, they have become essential to our operations. It's hard to remember how “out of touch” our members were in the old days before our e-mail systems started — a mere five years ago.
Our e-mail lists are operated by a computer program on our Internet server computer, which lets you send an identical message to a large number of recipients simply by sending the message to the one address of the entire list. Our list manager program can handle a number of such lists, each with a unique address. To add one's name to a list, one subscribes to it.
Each list can be set up in a unique way. For example, each list is either open or closed. In an open list, anyone with an e-mail address may subscribe to the list. In a closed list, only subscribers who meet some set of criteria may subscribe.
A list may be either unmoderated or moderated. In a moderated list, every message sent to the list address is first diverted to a designated person, who must approve the message before it is relayed to the list. Traditionally, most very large lists are operated as moderated lists in order to exercise control over what often otherwise could become a chaotic process. We have taken a different approach to our lists in order to promote a reasonable atmosphere of free speech.
The large e-mail lists we operate for our members' convenience, the members' list and the open line list, are closed and unmoderated. That means that only members of our organization may subscribe to these lists, but once subscribed, any member can send messages directly to the list with no pre-screening as to content.
To make this system work, our members need to exercise some self-discipline and acquire some basic computer skills. More about that next time.
“TechNotes” by Paul Mosher runs in each issue of TAP, with the aim of educating us about aspects of technology and communications relevant to our work.