I missed this interesting discussion because I have been away.
We do something a little different here that may or may not
be of any assistance to Kathy or of interest to others.

  We rarely delete a class mailing list that is associated with an
"official university course" in a department/faculty. The class list names
are simple, i.e., MATH 222 will have a list name of "MATH222-L" as they
are unique because only one is taught by that name.  Sections contain
letters, i.e., MATH222a-L. List names are standardized because they are
used by another program for auto subscription of students registered in a
class each Term/Year from the Registrar's database.  The reason why we now
rarely delete mailing lists for classes is because of the repetition over
the years of deleting and then creating again and again, the next time a
list is wanted.  Once created, the list belongs to the department (similar
to obtaining a new office computer) and *they* are responsible for looking
after it and updating it when it is needed again (which includes removing
the archives and changing owners if a different faculty member is teaching
the class.)  The *only* time we will delete a class mailing list is if a
department or faculty owner contacts us and tells us that the class is no
longer offered at Queen's and thus, the list will never be used again.

Hope this is helpful. Just a slightly different slant on the situation
where we slowly, over a period of a year or so, shifted responsibility
for class lists to their respective departments/offices.  Works very well
here but it might not work elsewhere.

--Trish

Trish Forrest, Queen's University