Help: Subscribing to E-mail Discussion Groups

You should send all administrative commands, like subscribe, to the administrative address (usually listserv@host) not to the list address (listname@host). The Mailserver is the program that maintains the list (most likely listserv but also listproc, mailbase, mailserv, or majordomo). The host is the address where the computer running the list is located (for example, the SCREEN-L list is at the University of Alabama address: ua1vm.ua.edu). To subscribe to a list, send your message to the listserv@host, leave the subject line blank (or type "no subject") and in the body of the message type subscribe listname your name. For example, to join the discussion list screen-l@ua1vm.ua.edu, send an e-mail message containing the command

              subscribe screen-l John Doe 

              to listserv@ua1vm.ua.edu

Again, most mailing lists are run by the LISTSERV mailer program, but there are others and some have minor differences:

Listproc: subscribe listname Firstname Lastname

(e.g., subscribe vidpro-l Hans Lucas)

Mailbase: JOIN listname Firstname Lastname

(e.g., join web-support Paul Henning)

Mailserv: subscribe listname Firstname Lastname

(e.g., subscribe popcult Maya Deren )

Majordomo: subscribe listname

(e.g., subscribe film-theory NO NAME)

Also, some subscription commands are sent to listname-requests@host. Just subscribe the same way as you would to a LISTSERV. Finally, sometimes a person is operating a list without a mailer program handling the administrative tasks. In this case you should just follow the instructions specific to that list.