Glen Stewart has asked:

>I am finally making progress on a method of web access to *all* previous
>messages from your lists.  This will allow people to search for any word or
>phrase to locate any message ever written in your mailing list since it 
>existed here and on EZmlm.
>
>Now comes some questions I need each of you to reply to me about:
>
>1. Do you care if your list has archives at all?  For example, the Ladies_
>Fellowship list could be viewed as being a list that nobody would ever care
>to hunt for previous messages, because it's simple chat for the most part.
>On the other hand, the FutureBasic list has a lot of technical content that
>people would LOVE to be able to refer to if they could.  If you don't think
>your list needs to be archived, please let me know.

I think it's safe to say that we do indeed want the archives...

>2. If you DO feel your list should be archived, the next question is whether
>you want the whole world to be able to search through previous messages.  If
>your answer is no, then only subscribers can retrieve previous messages using
>the somewhat crude e-mail commands we've always had.  If you DO want the 
>whole world to be able to search the archive, then your list will have the 
>web-based search I'm developing.

So: Should the FB list archives be "generally accessible", or limited to 
subscribers? Because anyone can subscribe, read the archives, then 
unsubscribe, I don't think "locking non-subscribers out" would prevent 
anyone from getting to the information; on the other hand, it _would_ 
prevent automated web-searching robots from trolling through and pulling 
out every email address it finds to be added to the next spam mailing 
list. For this reason, _my_ vote would tend to be "subscribers only" - 
but I figured I'd throw it out to the list and see if anyone has any 
other opinions on the subject.

Bill