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As with Usenet news, there are mailing lists on a wide variety of subjects. A complete list of publicly available mailing lists is posted regularly to the Usenet newsgroup news.answers.
ON THE WEB:
You can search for mailing lists via the Web at
Mailing lists are typically set up by using a mail reflector. A mail reflector is a special e-mail address that’s set up to reflect any mail sent to it back out to a group of people. Usually, two e-mail addresses are associated with a mailing list: that of the list maintainer and that of the list itself.
Suppose that there’s an e-mail address for the users of widgets. The e-mail address for the list might be something like [email protected]. If you send an e-mail message to this list address, it’s reflected to all the people who subscribe to the list.
By convention, Internet mailing lists use a special e-mail address for administrative requests, such as subscribing to the list. This address is constructed by adding -request to the name of the list. So for the imaginary widgets mailing list, the administrative e-mail address would be [email protected]. All mail that addresses administrative topics should be sent to the administrative address.
Each mailing list (and Usenet newsgroup) has its own rules and culture. You should become familiar with the local customs before sending mail out onto the list. Usually, you get an introduction message and possibly a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) when you subscribe to a list. The introduction message contains any special rules that apply to the list. Make sure that you read the FAQ first so that you don’t ask the same questions as hundreds of other people.
• See “Netiquette on Usenet,” p. 666
WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers) is a system for searching a large set of databases for information. The term wide area implies being able to use a large network, such as the Internet, to conduct searches by using client/server software.
By using WAIS, you can retrieve text or multimedia documents that are stored on databases throughout the Internet. You can think of WAIS as being similar to gopher, except that WAIS does the searching for you.
Like gopher, to use WAIS, you need client software or have to use telnet to connect to a site that provides public access to a WAIS client. There’s an interactive UNIX WAIS client known as swais. To use this system, you can telnet to sunsite.unc.edu and log in as swais. You then get a menu of databases that you can search.
The World Wide Web is a wonderful way to explore the Internet and tap its vast resources. Various Web browsers are available as free software or as commercial products. Using a Web browser makes it easy to surf the Net and find the information you need. You can learn more about the Web and the Internet in the following chapter:
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