Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu
In April 2025, BC is transitioning to Google Groups for email-based discussion groups. Existing BCPost lists can still be used and modified until the springtime retirement. However, all new lists should be created in Google Groups.

Mailing lists service

Mailing lists - General introduction

What is a mailing list?

A mailing list is a distribution list allowing a group of subscribers to automatically receive by email all messages sent to the list: every message sent to the list by a subscriber is received by all the other subscribers. When subscribed to a mailing list, it is possible to send messages, to reply to them or to read them without contributing (i.e. to "lurk").

Special cases:

Interest of mailing lists

People subscribe to a mailing list (sometimes abbreviated in ML) to be informed about a particular topic and to take part in exchanges about it. Examples are:

Types of mailing lists

There are thousands of mailing lists of all kinds on the Internet: public or private, free or not, with subscription subject to conditions or not, etc. Those lists may have from a dozen up to several thousand members.

According to the way they work, we can distinguish between two types of lists:


Top of Page