I can give you three examples of addresses being "mined" from archived
lists, stemming from my experience on a USENET-gated support list for
persons who have a debilitating, myserious disease for which there is no
known cure -- which leaves us rather vulnerable.

1.  We have direct evidence of insurance companies using search engines
to "mine" posts by their clients to try to use as evidence that they are
not disabled (using the posts selectively, of course).  If it came to
court, of course, such things would not be useful to the insurance
company, but they use it to scare and harass the clients.  Thus a
completely open list leads to the stifling of free speech.

2.  We have direct evidence of shysters and con artists mining addresses
off USENET and open web archives to hawk their treatment plans to the
desperate.

3.  When a list is open to anybody who wants to browse through the
messages, you get jerks and nutcases who cause trouble, either privately
by harassing people whose addresses they got off the lists, or publicly
on the lists.  They don't do it if they don't have an audience, and they
can't do it if they can't get addresses to harass.  It has happened to
me.  But I choose to be public, so I ignore it.  If I have subscribers
who wish to be protected from these fools and creeps, then I think it's
a nice thing to do to offer them a relatively safe environment.

So, there are three examples of why some people prefer lists NOT to be
archived on a website and why they prefer lists NOT to be gated to
USENET.

Conversely, I would like very much to have a list I could gate to
USENET, but that appears to be impossible.  I'm a latecomer, so it's not
an option available to me.  The rules for USENET groups are biased
against newcomers who have a different, but perfectly respectable,
approach than those who run existing groups; and the American U gateway
is now closed to newcomers.

Mary Schweitzer