I have participated in, administered, and been banned from numerous mailing lists over the years. I think they will always have a soft spot in my heart. Usenet and Google Groups tended to have a very low signal to noise ratio, unless the group was moderated. Moderation, of course, introduced its own set of problems, because not everyone saw eye-to-eye with what was considered acceptable. To be fair, some of those same problems existed on mailing lists, but they just didn't seem to be as big.
Yes, you have social media and other solutions, but I think this sums up my feelings best:
"You are coming to the mailing list to discuss a specific topic. When you are on a social media site, it is a bit of a free-for-all. You put something on your wall, but you don't know how many people will see it," Thomas said. "There is more of a community with a mailing list."As long as email exists, I think mailing lists will continue to persist as well.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some email to check, and then my twitter timeline, and then my Facebook page, and oh yeah, somebody posted something to G+ as well. . .
What did you do to get banned from a mailing list?
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