Publishing Your Information - Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web - page 279

essentials
Even if you can't stand the idea of using a mailing list to publish your infor-
mation, you might want to consider creating a mailing list in conjunction
with a Web site or wiki. I've had a Web site for ResearchBuzz for over eight
years, but many people would rather get a weekly newsletter with a sum-
mary of what's on the Web site. Sometimes it's because they don't want to
visit the site regularly; sometimes it's so they can pass around interesting
bits via e-mail, and sometimes it's because they want to print out interesting
bits and keep them.
When you have a mailing list, you can have either a discussion group or an
announcement-only list. Newsletters are announcement-only lists. Discus-
sion groups allow the readers to discuss your research, add opinions of their
own, and even contribute to what you've found. You'll have to be careful,
though—leading a bunch of people in a discussion oten leads to a lot of
refereeing and damping down of lame wars. Unless you're creating a list for
a small group of people, stick to announcement lists.
tip
When you start up a mailing list, it's very important to set up
conirmation subscriptions. so whenever people try to subscribe
to your mailing list, they have to respond to a conirmation e-mail
that's sent to your address. it protects them—it means nobody
can subscribe them to a mailing list without their permission.
and it protects you—if anybody accuses you of spamming them
with your newsletter, you can point out that your newsletter is
a conirmed subscription and that all subscribers had to conirm
their addresses.
Free mailing lists
If you'd like to start a mailing list, you have some free options to choose
from. here are a few pay options as well. One thing I would not suggest,
unless you're a big geek with a lot of free time, is setting up your own mail-
ing server. You'll have to deal with things like people accusing you of spam-
ming, accidentally getting on blacklists, and making sure that your server
doesn't get cracked. By using a hosted solution, you let somebody else han-
dle all that hassle, while you can concentrate on publishing your research
and getting it out there!