Working with mailing lists involves several e-mail addresses. Administrative requests, such as a request to be added to the list, dropped from the list, or asking for an index of messages that have been sent to the list, are sent to the list's administrative address. There may be a person on the other end of this address, but most often administrative requests are received and interpreted by mailing list management software. The other address is for the mailing list itself. This is the address to which messages are sent for dissemination to the entire mailing list.
Subscribers can send a reply either directly to the author of the message, or to the entire list.
Some lists are moderated. Some lists are restricted - subscriptions to the list are not available to the public. This site allows you to run a search for a list on a specific topic. The Tile site categorizes mailing lists by name and subject. It also has a brief description of each making it easy for you to find out if there is a list that interests you.