How are Mail Lists Different from Usenet News Groups?
With Usenet news groups, all messages to the group are stored in a central place. There are only a few copies of the messages around the world. To access those messages, you use a news group reader to read the mail. Since all messages are stored on a central server, individual users do not need extensive storage space. But you only need to participate (read) Usenet messages when you want to. You can read them regularly for days then skip several weeks. Another advantage of Usenet groups is that you don’t have to join them — you can read all current messages in any groups that interest you. With Mail lists, copies of all messages are sent to all members of the list. Thus there are as many copies of the message as there are members of the group. To access those messages, you simply read them as you would any e-mail message. Since copies of all messages are sent to all users on the list, users may need extensive storage space — especially if the list is active. You do need to read your
