Hi Lucas.

I'd personally very much recommend googlegroups. The two main providers I've noticed have been googlegroups and yahoo groups, and yahoo groups seems to have no end of problems, ---- not accepting subscription requests, getting spam, randomly deciding to stop accepting mail from some people, and goodness knows what the list controls and administration options are like.

Google however I can confirm is both easy to subscribe to and to use. You don't actually need to tangle with any software, all the options are on the googlegroups page in the account settings (I know this myself sinse I moderate the entombed list).

Subscribing is also very easy for people to do, and they can also set their options fairly easily.

While there probably is independent software that would let you setup a list such as that the audeasy list uses, to me that wouldn't be necessary unless you wanted to do something specific.

So, my personal recommendation is to just use google groups.

Al right, thanks a lot for the tips and updated information, Dark and Pitermach. :-) Topica might be down as well as I haven't heard about it for at least the same amount of time as about Smartgroups. :-)
So I will check the administration side of Googlegroups and Freelists, cause I don't feel like getting an independent software to setup my own list, and my own domain for that matter just now either. It's just that I have experienced some issues with Googlegroups lists as an end user in the past, including the Rail Racer, Sound RTS and Time of Conflict lists, the ones with TOC being quite recent. It seems to refuse certain international email addresses such as my own. For TOC, I even had to setup a Google account just for the list cause it simply didn't let me go through for some reason, although I can't remember the details any more. And when I did get through, I had to do all settings and modifications directly from the page of the group, mail commands didn't seem to work for me. Finally, it sometimes took a very long time until I saw messages delivered to me, both my own bounces and posts of other members, etc, etc.... On the other hand, the Entombed list went really smoothly as far as I remember, so much in fact that I entirely forgot it was located on googlegroups. :-D
I'll see how Freelists looks like to the list owner, cause I am subscribed to several lists there, including the NVDA support one and a few czech ones, and it works really flawlessly and smoothly for me. We'll see. Thanks anyway for the directions. :-)
Lukas

All right, I appreciate your helpful comments, Dark, but I have already applied for my lists at Freelists. All of the options you described are also provided there, plus many more, and their site is so accessible and very simply and yet thoroughly explained that I feel familiar with it all now even before my lists were actually registered. :-) I definitely recommend this provider for checking out, at least out of interest and for comparison.
Lukas

Hi,
As Dark, I recommend googlegroups. group creation and set your group's settings  and other things like that  verry much easy.

Sure, they accepted it just fine because I read their policy carefully. :-) In there, it is clearly stated that they will accept only lists that are related to technology in one way or another. If they were to accept all lists about anything and everything, they would really have to start charging for their services, or something along those lines. However, it was a somewhat hurried decision anyway. I was looking for information for just about two days, then applied for three different lists (game discussion in English, game discussion in czech and beta testing list in english) and only then discovered a wonderful domain name and webhosting provider here in the Czech Republic so I immediately got myself a domain in the .com level. I won't say anything more specific until I actually have a website and my first game ready though. If all goes well, this should be in early to mid February. :-)
They won't let me use any MLMS (mailing list management software) directly on their servers though, so I will have to do one of the following anyway:
1. Create a list somewhere else, probably use the ones I got on Freelists, and set up a mailbox on my domain that will serve as a forwarder to that list. That could cause some major confusion though, when people send their posts and requests to "my-list" (optional "-request") [at] my_domain.com and receive the resulting reply from "my-list" ("-request") [at] freelists.org. :-)
2. Get informed about a software solution that does not require to be installed physically on a server but rather resides on a central domain and lets you assign any addresses you like to the list, sending the actual email messages by means of PHP, for example. It should still be technically possible and the forwarding of messages from that other place would happen entirely behind the scenes so that it would not bother the user in any way. anyone ever heard of anything like that?
3. Simply scratch the idea of mailing lists altogether and use this wonderful PunBB forum instead. :-)
Any further thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Lukas

All right, I know this is probably what I'll eventually end up doing anyway. It just seems to me that quite a couple of VI users still prefer the good old method of mailing lists, with all its possible drawbacks, especially when traffic gets high, over a more or less unfamiliar web-based interface of a forum (although PunBB is incredibly accessible, easy and straightforward!) that they are forced to specifically log into and check if they want to look for new posts. Well, guess they'll just have to put up with it then. :-D After all, there are wonderfully many members here.
Lukas

Hi.
As per me,a PunBB forum will be the best.speaking for myself,I never could get used to the mailing lists.They seem to fill my inbox, and I have to read through things,which I don't want to read about to get to the one,in which I am interested.I have tryed a few like entombed and other such mailing lists,but alas.I couldn't keep up with them.But its just me,I suppose.

Hi Dark,
It's funny; I've had all my problem with Google Groups and noenw tih Yahoo GRoup. Thing is, when I tried to subscrbiet to tne ENtombed list with my hotmail it refulsed to let me; I had to use a google accout. Now for some odd reason it works fine with hotmail.

I did understand that but it might be a good idea to proof read one's posts before submiting them anyway. :-)
Lukas

Hi,
Yeah--I apologize for that; I just looked over it and it's quite a mess.