I've been wondering why the default for STATS is "private", since
it seems desirable (at first glance, anyway) that a list's
statistics be available easily to subscribers and potential
subscribers.  Extended statistics apparently take a lot of CPU
time, so perhaps the same issue bears on the availability of even
normal statistics?
 
I guess the question then comes down to how stats are calculated:
are they updated with every new posting, or are they recalculated
with every STATS command?
 
I'd be interested in your comments on this.
 
Regards,
Taylor Roberts