Hi all, I believe, in the best of all worlds, the ideal would be to provide immediate access to the widest possible audience. However, SPAM and other privacy risks *seem* to outweigh the possible advantages of uncontrolled access. Also, I am a harvey-l subscriber, so access to these archives is not an issue for me. But, what if I want to research my BREWER roots? Do I subscribe to brewer-l, lurk, access the archives, then unsubscribe? Why couldn't a spammer do the same thing? What bona fides should be required to join a mailing list? More importantly, what if one of my 4th or 5th Harvey cousins wants to find out more about his lineage? There are ways of dealing with SPAM. For example, Phil Agre, [email protected], http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/, in an article entitled *How to Complain About Spam, or, Put a Spammer in the Slammer* suggests several ways of dealing with SPAM thru the FTC, Post Office, police, FBI, legislators, ISP's, etc. He concludes by saying <<If we despair about spam then the spammers win. Many thousands of people are working against spam, each in their own way. If you simply pick the one method that you find most convenient then you can be confident that these antisocial people will eventually be compelled to find better ways of making a living.>> The rule should be that if the mailing list is public, i.e. a simple subscribe message gets you on the list, then the archives should be public. Conversely, if the archives should be private, then the subscription process must be controlled. This would be a burden on someone. I believe the point of the harvey-l discussion list and the possible archives should be to make the information available to the greatest number of people who are interested in their Harvey lineage. Also, there are other avenues for dealing with SPAM, etc. Therefore, my bottom line is that the advantages of a public discussion coupled with public archives outweigh the disadvantages of keeping them private. Thanks for letting me express my opinion, John -- John Harvey, Programmer/Analyst [email protected] County of Riverside http://www.co.riverside.ca.us/ Distributed Processing Team Phone: (909) 275-6914 4195 Alessandro Blvd. FAX: (909) 275-3645 Riverside, CA 92506-5330