Mailing List
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| See also: | listmod, listmom | |
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During the early 1990s, online fandom spread out from newsgroups to include mailing lists, which allowed for fast, easy e-mail communication.
From a mid-1990s Media Monitor: "Mailing Lists are a convenient way for a group of people to share their input on a given subject. Think of them as online letterzines, only with an instantaneous turnaround. Once you subscribe, you automatically begin recieving all the mail that the list members contribute. Be careful to followt the instructions for signing up as they are explained, because many times the list is maintained by the computer, which is programmed to respond to specific wording. Be forewarned: some active mailing lists can generate up to 100 messages a day, so consider this before subscribing to many lists at the same time."
Other than reflector lists (where list members were bcc'd on every email that came in to the list), the earliest mailing lists were mainly restricted to university or private servers. This limited list ownership to those who had access to those servers, and as a result, list-based fandoms tended to be very centralized, with limited places to communicate.
Some lists were multi-fandom, such as the first slash list, Virgule, which existed to give slash fans (a minority in online media fandom at the time) a place to talk.
However, most were single-fandom. There was usually a main discussion list for show discussion -- for instance, HIGHLA-L [1] for Highlander and ForKNI-L [2] for Forever Knight. There might also be a fiction list -- usually gen-only like FKFIC-L [3], or with specific posting rules about posting slash and gen fic such as HLFIC-L [4]. Later, separate erotica fiction lists (het, slash, or both) were created to give people a forum for their more adult stories: examples include the Sentinel lists SXF (slash and adult het) and Senfic (gen) and the due South lists DSX (slash) and DIEF (gen).
In 1997, ONElist was formed, making it possible for anyone to create a mailing list. Over the next few years, several similar services (Coollist, e-Groups, Topica) sprang up. Fandom took full advantage, with new lists for shows that hadn't had any lists at all before, and more specialized lists -- for pairings, fiction kinks, etc. -- for fandoms that had been centralized.
In 1999 ONElist and e-Groups merged, and in 2000, Yahoo! bought eGroups and formed Yahoo! Groups, where many fannish lists wound up by default. These "group" lists include a searchable web-based archive of all posts and places to share uploaded files.
While reflector lists have largely gone out of fashion, active mailing lists currently still exist for hundreds of fandoms across private servers, university servers, and services such as Yahoo!Groups.
Mailing lists, like Yahoo Groups, allowed fans to create a more customized and controlled fandom experience. This had both positive and negative impact on fandom.
- "Back in the day, especially on Usenet, there was a larger sense of fandom. Slashers, shippers, and those who couldn't care less who's banging who all co-existed on the same newsgroup. Oh yeah, there were fights, but fandom was a lot more interesting back then because you were exposed to more opinions. With the advent of OneList and it's many evolutions, fandom started to become much more factionalized as each fandom had dozens of lists. Now fandoms have dozens of communities. Slashers never have to be exposed to shippers, and vice versa. It cuts down on shipper wars, sure, but I think it robs of a sense of truly being a fandom." [5].
