Coastal Services Center

Basics

A Listserv or discussion group is an on-line community of people who share some common interest in a particular subject matter. There are Listservs devoted to almost any topic you can imagine. Most frequently, they are used for discussions, electronic journals, or digests.

Discussion groups are run by a software program on a web server; however, some are also moderated by a real person. When a member of the group sends an e-mail to the group, the software program automatically posts the e-mail to everyone on a master list.