Whats the difference between a mailing list and a newsgroup or a conference?
An email list is an automated software program that allows you to use a single address to send a message out to multiple participants. You can have it as interactive as you want. It can be public or private, or either moderated or unmoderated. It depends on what the group needs. Email lists are completely asynchronous which means they don’t operate within the boundaries of time and place. You can get a group of people working together online without requiring them to be all on the phone or the Internet at the same time. It basically allows you to do group work on email as opposed to having to go somewhere on the Internet which is what you have to do with a newsgroup or a conference, or an internet relay chat (the Internet equivalent of a teleconference). So there would certainly be some advantages to an email list, even if it wasn’t “synchronous.” I guess the disadvantage would be that you can’t respond right away to what someone says. Paradoxically, though, there is an advantage to th
