It seems to me that 2 list headers, in particular, are not used enough. Mail-via= Distribute Should be used whenever the list has the potential to have non-local subscribers. "Distribute" is the same as "Dist2" as far as I can tell. This should be done right at the outset when the list is created. It seems to me that people have a tendency to look at "peering" the list far too quickly without using this option (perhaps because peering is emphasised in the documentation). Service= Local or Service= (area1),(area2),... (where Local is defined in your LOCAL SYSVARS file). Then use the value "Service" as the "access level" in any of the following headers as appropriate: Review=, Send=, Confidential=, Notebook= (4th parm). We all see the number of TEST LISTs on the network and this can be avoided by using these values properly. In addition, there are a number of "local redistributions" (not peered) of many of the popular lists. These lists should not appear in the "list of lists" and can be suppressed with "Confidential= Service" On 13 Apr 90, Mark Williamson at Rice posted a list of LIST keywords and their default values for 1.6d on this list. I find this really useful information and would love to see it updated for 1.7a - my impressions are that the defaults listed in this posting are still correct.