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Introduction to Discussion Lists
A discussion list is like a forum for information exchange on a specific topic. In general there are two types of discussion lists: mailing lists based on e-mails, and newsgroups based on news servers.
Mailing lists work like a distribution service of e-mails. There are different ways to handle mailing lists, which depends on used server software. For participation you have to know how to
Mailing lists are used for general discussions on statistical topics (like Allstat, Stat-L) or specific applications (like Bayes-News, Biomet-L, Exact-Stats), for statistical societies (like IASC) or for software-related topics (like MINITAB, S-News, SAS-L). Some mailing lists only work as distribution lists (oneway), for example TSNews-L of technical support news by SAS Institute.
Newsgroups are like electronic bulletin boards, no
subscription necessary, but also no list of potential users available.
They are maintained by news servers (Usenet), which require specific
news-reader software (included in some WWW browsers). Currently there
are more than 15000 newsgroups available, some with a lot of traffic
(say more then 200 messages per day). Newsgroups archives are now available via
Google Groups (a former service from DejaNews).
I would recommend to choose news-reader software which offers
My current choice for MS-Windows computers is Free Agent by Forté 
, available free for
private use only.
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Mailing lists / Newsgroups
Mailing Lists for Statisticians
I don't give here my own list of mailing lists for statisticians, but you'll find some web sources with lists including details and joining information.
List of Statistical Lists 
Most comprehensive, by Mike Fuller.
Statistical List
Subscription Service Huge collection with easy-to-use
subscription service, by Stat/Transfer.
Statistic-related
mailing lists Collected on Minitab web site, with all details
and easy joining feature.
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Mailing lists / Newsgroups
Newsgroups for Statisticians
There exist only a few, but very interesting newsgroups for
statisticians, some of them are for specific statistical software.
Links to the respective archives are listed next to the entries below.
Newsgroups on Statistics
Groups on the science of statistics can be found in the
sci.stat.* category.
sci.stat.consult Discussions on
statistical consulting (linked to Stat-L mailing
list), search with
Google archive
sci.stat.edu Discussions on
educational topics and teaching statistics (linked to
Edstat-L mailing list), search with
Google archive
sci.stat.math Discussions on
mathematical statistics, search with
Google archive
Newsgroups on Statistical Software
Groups on the statistical software can be found in the
comp.soft-sys.* category.
comp.soft-sys.matlab
Discussions on MATLAB software, search with
Google archive
comp.soft-sys.sas Discussions
on SAS software (linked to SAS-L mailing list), search with
Google archive
comp.soft-sys.shazam
Discussions on SHAZAM software, search with
Google archive
comp.soft-sys.stat.spss
Discussions on SPSS software (linked to SPSS-L
mailing list), search with
Google archive
comp.soft-sys.stat.systat
Discussions on SyStat software, search with
Google archive
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Mailing lists / Newsgroups