Editing Mailing list (section)

==History==
Mailing lists have first been scholarly mailing lists.<ref>{{Cite journal
  |last=Hyman |first=Avi |date=2003 |title=Twenty years of ListServ as an academic tool
  |url=https://www.infona.pl//resource/bwmeta1.element.elsevier-80a62de2-da37-37a4-8dfc-b1ee0ace0f03
  |journal=The Internet and Higher Education |language=en |volume=1 |issue=6 |pages=17–24 |doi=10.1016/S1096-7516(02)00159-8 
  |issn=1096-7516}}</ref> The genealogy of mailing lists as a communication tool between scientists can be traced back to the times of the fledgling [[ARPANET|Arpanet]]. The aim of the [[Computer science|computer scientists]] involved in this project was to develop protocols for the communication between computers. In so doing, they have also built the first tools of human [[computer-mediated communication]]. Broadly speaking, the scholarly mailing lists can even be seen as the modern version of the [[Salon (gathering)|salons]] of the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] ages, designed by scholars for scholars.<ref>{{Cite book
|url=http://books.openedition.org/oep/1843
|title=Qu'est-ce qu'un forum internet ? : Une généalogie historique au prisme des cultures savantes numériques
|last=Paloque-Bergès |first=Camille |date=January 9, 2018
|publisher=OpenEdition Press |isbn=978-97910-3650-4
|series=Encyclopédie numérique |location=Marseille |language=fr |doi=10.4000/books.oep.1843}}</ref>

The "[[Conversation threading|threaded conversation]]" structure (where the header of a first post defines the topic of a series of answers thus constituting a thread) is a typical and ubiquitous structure of discourse within lists and fora of the Internet. It is pivotal to the structure and topicality of debates within mailing lists as an arena, or [[public sphere]] in [[Jürgen Habermas|Habermas]] wording. The [[Flaming (Internet)|flame wars]] (as the liveliest episodes) give valuable and unique information to historians to comprehend what is at stake in the communities gathered around lists.<ref>{{Cite journal|title=Mailing list archives as useful primary sources for historians: looking for flame wars
|journal=Internet Histories |volume=2 |issue=1–2 |pages=38–54 |doi=10.1080/24701475.2018.1456741 |year=2018
|last1=Hocquet |first1=Alexandre |last2=Wieber |first2=Frédéric |s2cid=158176567
|url=https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01916970/file/LookingForFlameWars.pdf}}</ref>

Anthropologists, sociologists and historians have used mailing lists as fieldwork.<ref>{{Cite journal
|last1=Hoybye |first1=Mette |last2=Beaulieu |first2=Anne
|date=2011 |title=Studying Mailing Lists: text, temporality, interaction and materiality at the intersection of email and the web
|url=https://www.rug.nl/research/portal/en/publications/studying-mailing-lists%2837b5f951-eddd-4e38-9da4-7b231cc3de46%29.html
|journal=Handbook of Emergent Technologies in Social Research
|language=en |pages=257–274}}</ref> Topics include TV series fandom,<ref>{{Cite journal
   |last=Bury  |first=Rhiannon  |title=Stories for [Boys] Girls: Female Fans Read The X-Files
   |journal=Popular Communication |volume=1 |issue=4 |pages=217–242 |doi=10.1207/S15405710PC0104_2 |year=2003
   |s2cid=143817915}}</ref> online culture,<ref>{{Cite book
|title=Living on [[Cybermind]] : categories, communication, and control
|last=Marshall |first=Jonathan Paul |date=2007 |publisher=Peter Lang
|isbn=978-08204-9514-9 |location=New York |oclc=77767279}}</ref> or scientific practices<ref>{{Cite journal
     |last1=Hocquet |first1=A. |last2=Wieber |first2=F.
     |date=October 2017 |title="Only the Initiates Will Have the Secrets Revealed": Computational Chemists and the Openness of Scientific Software
     |journal=[[IEEE Annals of the History of Computing]]
     |volume=39 |issue=4 |pages=40–58 |doi=10.1109/MAHC.2018.1221048 |issn=1058-6180 |arxiv=1811.12173
     |s2cid=3438532 }}</ref> among many other academic studies. From the historian's point of view, the issue of the preservation of mailing lists heritage (and Internet fora heritage in general) is essential. Not only the text of the corpus of messages has yet to be perennially archived, but also their related [[metadata]], [[timestamp]]s, headers that define topics, etc. Mailing lists archives are a unique opportunity for historians to explore interactions, debates, even tensions that reveal a lot about communities.<ref>{{Cite journal
|last1=Wieber |first1=Frédéric |last2=Pisanty |first2=Alejandro |last3=Hocquet |first3=Alexandre
|date=December 18, 2018
|title="We were here before the Web and hype…": a brief history of and tribute to the Computational Chemistry List
|journal=[[Journal of Cheminformatics]] |volume=10 |issue=1 |pages=67
|doi=10.1186/s13321-018-0322-7 |pmid=30564941 |pmc=6755560 |issn=1758-2946 |doi-access=free }}</ref>