Wow, not sure I can explain them properly, but have used them all. News groups are "Usenet" and 99% are not moderated at all. Spammers love them. I tried an experiment 3 years back where I put out a GMail address of mine ONCE.........I still get a minimum of 50 spam emails a day at that address. Lists and Forums are much the same and I am a Moderater on the British Genealogy one, where I am responsible for Cumberland, UK and a small West Indian one. They are by registration only and are heavily protected against spam or weirdos. I have the ability to cancel or change anything posted on there, along with the other Super Mods......so even the sneaky spammers do not get through. Another problem with Rootsweb, unless it has changed, is that spammers can easily view the list of members and grab the real email addresses. So in short, Rootsweb should get out of the Dark Ages and close ranks against these spammers. I am also on several antivirus and malware forums and with each one you not only have to register, but be approved. They are far better than any others. But I hate change, lol. See your address below?? That is showing up on the soc.genealogy.west-indies news group........and freely available to any spam robots that are roaming news groups. The best way to try and stem some of the spam is to have Rootsweb close the door to Usenet. But that has been an ongoing debate for eons. Hope I made this easier to understand, but other than a couple of Microsoft ng's, along with malware and jewellery ones, I stick to Forums. Cheers.......Heather (and I just checked Rootsweb, which runs your List and it is wide open to spammers....8-((( <lwa101@comcast.net> wrote in message news:mailman.112.1264607023.1999.caribbean@rootsweb.com... > Okay, I'll bite. What is the difference between news groups, forums, > lists, and message boards? How do I tell? > > Cheers, Laura > > On Jan 27, 2010, at 12:18 AM, Heather wrote: >> but why not ask >> Rootsweb to disassociate the List from the news groups.......there are >> not >> all that many posts via the ng's. I believe this has come up a few >> times >> before, but due to the insane amount of spam on Usenet, they should >> listen >> to you. >> >>