I am one of the listowners for a mailing list that is populated by about
passionate 600 members. A few are very volatile people. Flame wars break out
with regularity. This list was formed before I joined it and the job of
listowner has been passed between varying numbers of people over the years. The
person who started the list is no longer on it. The list is hosted for free by
an American university and no one currently on the list has any involvement with
that university.

Until this summer the list was unmoderated in any form. Things got so bad that
the list membership voted to give the listowners authority to reprimand rude,
abusive list members, even to kick them off the list. Things calmed down and
stayed on subject for a couple of months but one person who had his posting
privileges revoked due to his behavior threatened to sue the university for
violation of his "civil rights." Rather than face a lawsuit over a list they
were not involved in, the university forced us to reinstate his posting
privileges (or get off their servers) and things have rapidly deteriorated.
There have been verbal, legal, physical and even death threats. The list
membership has voted to try to find another host that will allow us to regulate
ourselves.

So, here's some questions:

1) How do you deal with rude list members? Moderation and editing of posts is
not an option.

2) Does anyone know of a free listserv server that might accept our list and let
us regulate it?

3) Has anyone dealt with any of the free web based mailing list hosts such as
OneList, eGroups, ListBot, Topica, etc.? Problems?

We would like to stay with Listserv 1.8d software if we could.
--
Walter Potter