Hilda, I assume you are attempting to protect the list from "spamming" by outside individuals. Other lists have been able to do this without restricting membership, but I do not know how. Since I subscribe to quite a few lists, and I travel a great deal, I subscribe and unsubscribe to lists fairly often to keep my e-mail under control. I guess it would be more difficult to do that in a restricted list. Just tossing this out for your consideration. It seems to me that the more open the participation, the more we will learn. Barbara