Just for grins I set up a list on Yahoogroups (KOA of the Internet)
to see what's involved in managing a list there.
I am running LISTSERV's little brother, LITE here, but even though I
*really* wish LISTSERV would come down out of the alps on their
licensing prices, it still offer far more flexibility for managing
lists than does Yahoogroups.
I like the banning (but filter=also does it, too). Attachment
handling is poor. It's all or nothing at least with RTF, while even
LITE allows html and rtf to be stripped as well as other kinds of
attachments rather than rejecting the message outright. You can't
reject certain kinds of attachments, while accepting others, like you
can with LISTSERV or LITE.
It also offers no individual moderation, such as NOPOST or REVIEW
(which isn't available in LITE, either), nor does it appear to
automatically handle bounces, which LITE does to a certain extent,
providing your MTA hands them the bounce in a way LISTSERV
recognizes.
There appears to be no way to access the archives or search by email
(you can't search with LITE either way) nor can you set your email to
NOMAIL or digest or individual mails except by web interface, which
requires that you have a YAHOO ID, which a number of people on those
lists consider the Yahoo ID to be an intrusion (apparently not
realizing that egroups has been yahoo since August).
There is no ability to set the size of digests (at least as far as I
can see) in order to accomodate those people who can't handle 200k
digests (like AOL).
There is no daily post limitation or daily threshold, which I have
used from time to time to keep exuberant posters under check.
It's my opinion that any seasoned list manager would feel kneecapped
by the limitations of the management possibilities on Yahoogroups,
but on the other hand, many unseasoned listowners would feel
overwhelmed by the possibilities presented by a package even as
management lite as LITE.
Generally speaking, I set up every list on my site and do the
tweaking for the owner. They just watch over the thing.
Amy
Listhost: Home of the original Machine Knitting lists
http://www.listhost.com/lists/index.html
