Mailing List suggestions needed

Since Yahoo have added their ads.

[stu2]

I have a mailing list which I've operated under Yahoo for several years to my satisfaction. 2 weeks ago, they added their ads to the right of the message. I always posted my messages in text mode with white space between columns of characters (eg a league table). Now, because they've added these ads, they've converted the message content to HTML as well, stripping all the white space out of the message, rendering it unreadable to the recipient. So I need some suggestions for an alternative mailing list, which allows the posting of text messages and without advertising. There are under 100 members on the list. Nothing sophisticated. Are there alternative web services to Yahoo Groups, or should I just go and pick up a script at hotscripts, and if so, which one?

[bill]

The Google Groups mail format is still pretty simple and works nicely with plain text.

[stu2]

Don't they add text ads to each mail? Are there any other web-based mailing lists besides Yahoo/Google. Can anyone recommend any php scripts? the 1 I tried didn't allow mailing list members to send mails to the list.

[bill]

The standard Google Groups messages each include unsubscribe links, not ads, in the footer. However you can set it to send without any message footer at all. Or you can add your own custom footer text (add your own ads) instead.

[stu2]

OK bill, thanks. I take closer look.

[stu2]

OK Bill. I tried GoogleGroups, but it seems to do the same as Yahoo and strips out all the whitespace, leaving a league table almost impossible to read. Did I miss something?

[stu2]

double posting.

[bill]

I didn't realize they were stripping whitespace on the Google Groups mail as I only send plain text messages, but with no table formatting. Are you sure that if you send a message to the group in plain text format that it will be stripped? This is different from sending the message from the web interface, which can be HTML formatted.

[stu2]

Ok I got more knowledge now :)

1) I found I can select the fixed font in the group's settings. This is good for showing those emails sent in text mode on the web interface.

2) And yep, my bad, a text email is received in text mode (without the whitespace being stripped) but shown on the web as variable fonts unless I select #1 above. So, sorry for the scare :)

Actually, from what I've seen so far, it all looks pretty good. I'm happy with it. Thanks.

Would you know if you can choose to show the newest messages in a thread 1st? I couldn't find an option for that.

stu

[bill]

I'm glad it's working the way I thought it did. ;)
Ever since Yahoo went with their new message format I've moved some group activity to Google and been happy with the results.

Would you know if you can choose to show the newest messages in a thread 1st?

I couldn't find that either. You can of course order the threads any way you like in your mail reader, but not on the web interface.

There are a few more options and a cleaner interface on the Groups Beta [groups-beta.google.com] site. You might want to look at that as well.

[stu2]

That's the site I'm using already :) It would have been nice to have been able to order a thread with the newest first, but it's not a deal breaker. Now, when I upload the league table weekly, I'll just have to start a new thread, rather than have them all in 1 folder.