Your recommendations for discussion list managers

Any suggestions for email-based discussion lists? I need ability to handle attachments, a web archive of some sort, an ability to have 'audit' list members who can read but not post, and a simple administration interface.

Basic Yahoo without the ads would be fine. I belong to dozens of yahoo lists; they are too complex for my users. (Simple mail lists with Yahoo works, but once you get into the Yahoo 'identity' etc., people come unravelled when trying to use the archives, files, photos, and all that junk.) Plus, the ads make my blood run cold.

Mailman is free and working so-so but I'm wondering if there's anything better that is practical. The list I'm concerned about is a couple dozen members who are on a board of directors, and a few hundred vultures wanting to look over their shoulder. Ease of administration is really important :-)

The newest version of Mailman is the main one I'd recommend, and has most, if not all, of the features you request.

I've also heard good things about Sympa. Majordomo2 (a complete rewrite) seems like an interesting project as well; I don't personally have much experience with it.

Thanks! A while ago there was mention of upgrading the version of Mailman at DH. Has that happened? Gonna? Thanks for the other tips. I will have a look. I'd love to stay with a host-supported app but feel I should poke around a little to make sure I'm doing the best I can by my folks.

Hasn't happened yet. It's actively being worked on, though (it's setup and working, but the list migration process is going to be trickier than we expected).

Unfortunately, we are not going to be able to get rid of the weird listnames, still.

Heh. I guess I've learned to live with the goofball list names. Since aliasing is so easy with the panel I rely on the fact that none of my 'listers' even read the headers, footers, or much else. As near as I can tell, they don't even read the To and Cc fields :-)

Haha.

The other good thing is that the newer version will allow per-list switching on / off of the rfc2369 (list command) headers. These get really long with our goofy list names, and at least now they'll be configurable on a per-list basis.

I look forward to the new version. Mailman does seem the best of the lot. On the new version, will there be any way to move (in an automated way, such as with cron) someplace where I can control access to it through .htaccess instead of cookies, etc.? Support said no for the current version. What I'd really like to do is allow members access to archives (updated daily) without requiring them to be subscribed. Lazy of me, I know, but...

With the current version I can create a generic subscriber with a dummy email address and just hand out the address and password to allow access to archives, but I can just imagine someone figuring out that they can change the profile of the dummy address and more specifically, the password. All that serves is to lock other members out of the archives, but Murphy's Law says that if something inane can happen, it will :-)

These are just idle thoughts and questions, really.

Will, what would be your recommendation for a new list: Should I hold off creating one and wait until DH upgrades from Mailman 2.0 to Mailman 2.1.3 (timeframes?), or should I just go ahead and start creating lists under the older Mailman version?