I remember "reflector" from my BBS days in the early/mid 1980's.
I also remember that when I got to the internet in 1990, there was a technical
distinction between "reflector" and ("mailing list"/"LISTSERV"). Reflectors
were "dumb" ways to direct email to a manually maintained list of addressees;
anything sent to the reflector list, including error messages, would go to
everyone on the list.
Mailing lists were smarter things, where a program would be used to maintain
the distribution list; eventually people could add or remove themselves by
sending a message to administrative addresses associated with specific lists;
and the program would attempt to filter out error messages (or offer an
administrator the power to moderate the list) to avoid unwanted traffic (a
concern at 300/1200/2400 bps dial-up speeds). LISTSERV was probably the first
(or at least the first to be widely used) mailing list software, followed later
by Majordomo and Mailman.
--
Michael Adams | mda@n1en.org
-----Original Message-----
From: CQ-Contest <cq-contest-bounces@contesting.com> On Behalf Of Dave Thompson
Sent: Tuesday, 11 June, 2019 08:40
To: cq-contest@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Where did "Reflector" come from?
Gang,
The word reflector was used on the darpa net that proceeded the internet WWW. I
used that to keep up with friends at Wang and Netron. my previous employers.
Some say it is derived from old BBS boards.
73 Dave K4JRB
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