If you're really looking for community on line, forget the Web. What you want is a mailing list. Lists are to chat rooms as a dinner party is to a singles bar -- quiet enough that you can hear yourself think, generally fairly decorous and often quite engaging.

A mailing list is a group of people talking via e-mail. Lists are created using one of many programs that allow subscribers to send a message and have it automatically forwarded to everyone else on the list. Messages come in chronological order, so you are in effect following an e-mail conversation.

Say you have a new Welsh terrier named Llionel, as my friend Michael Sheldon did. A neophyte dog owner, he joined a mailing list about Welsh terriers. When he sends a message with the subject line ''Grooming Issues'' to the list, his message is automatically sent to everyone else who's signed up.

Mailing lists famously fall prey to two things, one bad, one good. The bad: flaming -- incendiary messages from one list member publicly directed at another, impugning a person's honor, parentage and ability to walk upright, all because of something written. Lots of lists ban flaming. Some thrive on it.

Sheldon also is on a list for fans of the British TV series As Time Goes By, which features Oscar winner Judi Dench. Some of the list members are so fanatical in their love for her that they flew to New York as a group to see her in the play Amy's View on Broadway. A recurring flame on the As Time Goes By list complains that it's not the Denchophile list.

But making up for the flames is the good thing about lists: topic drift. Put enough people on a list for long enough, and they start talking not just about their dogs or their favorite TV shows, but their lives.

The Welsh terrier list has about 100 people, from as far as Germany and Australia. While they spend a goodly amount of time on shows, breeding, grooming and behavior, the list has become so chummy that they stage yearly gatherings. They recently launched a Friday evening chat room so they could hang out together.

Such a devoted membership generates ''an amazing amount of e-mail,'' Sheldon says. ''Usually when I get home from work and check it, I've got well over 100 messages.''

If the thought of 100 messages a day strikes fear into your heart (and some high-traffic lists generate upward of 1,000 a day), be not afraid -- all mailing lists have a digest option. That means you get all the day's messages compiled into one long message, usually with an index of subject lines at the top.

A nice overview of how lists work is available at alabanza.com/kabacoff/Inter-Links/ listserv.html. To find a list that might be right for you, do a Web search for your area of interest and see whether any of the sites that pop up contain links to mailing lists.

Lots of fan sites have easy-to-click-to mailing list links or pointers to other sites that might have such links. For an example, check out the As Time Goes By fan site at www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Lot/8254/atgb.html.

You can find lists of mailing lists at both Topica.com and Onelist.com. Both offer free list management, which makes starting your own list a breeze. Beware, though: Both sites only tell you about lists they host. To see the full universe of lists out there, check out the venerable and noncommercial Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists site, available at www.neosoft.com/internet/paml.

Signing up for lists is simple, but remembering how to unsubscribe can be problematic. Luckily, the Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists site also answers the next important question you'll be asking: ''How does one unsubscribe from a mailing list?''