The purpose for the statistics was to generate some demographic data about the list activities for the purpose of garnering corporate sponsorships for the list. I had previously considered starting a list for-profit. NTBugtraq is not-for-profit. Gathering the statistics I suggested would give me additional information (to my web archive statistics) that would allow me to better visualize the overhead and traffic patterns for my membership (whom I'd hope to market a future for-profit list). Being somewhat marketing oriented I've previously been involved in efforts to quantify market potential vs. cost of ownership. Some of the statistics address market potential (subscribe vs. remove over time could represent forecasted membership at some future date), obviously number of posts/queries represents cost of ownership (overhead). Etc... As a statistics pro, you can probably appreciate the value that statistics can yeild in creating the answer you desire...;-]...and in a situation where you are trying to put a business case together, creating desirable statistics can be useful (and detrimental, obviously). Until you see the statistics its often not possible to accurately determine whether or not they'll be valuable. Part of the value of statistics is that they may disclose previously unrealized aspects of their subject matter. The number of "info refcard" commands being processed might show its better to have a web page with that information available (and then the stats on the web page might prove that didn't make a difference). Windows NT makes performance counters available for most services. These counters are usually very detailed. Exchange, for example, has hundreds of counters available which you might use to gather statistical information. I've found these counters very valuable in assessing services, and thought something similar in Listserv (and you'll notice I didn't suggest NT functionality) would be equally valuable. Like most things, its not necessarily of value to eveyone. I didn't believe that the performance hit would be significant, nor that it would increase administrative overhead. I did believe it would give a list owner the ability to get summarized information about list activities that could be useful. I should also point out that I honestly believe that for-fee list management is a hugely under-tapped market. With push technologies rapidly becoming popular (of which many already offer email delivery) the potential growth of fee-based mailing lists is very good. I say this as a member of MCI's Internet Solutions Center which provides hosting services to customers for a variety of servers (web, sql, commerce, etc...). IMO, one of the reasons this remains untapped is because lists are seen as huge consumers of infrastructural resources (bandwidth in particular). By showing the list in a different light it may be easier to convince companies to use them as a marketing device. So if the consensus is that most lists are run because they have to run, or because someone wants to run them, and not to profit someone, then the information is probably trivial and of little value. If a list is run to make money, impact market share (say, of an advertiser/sponsor), or deliver marketing information, then I think the information is very valuable. Cheers, Russ R.C. Consulting, Inc. - NT/Internet Security