While working on the Rules of Procedure, it became obvious that we needed a document describing the various ALAC mailing lists giving a summary of their usage and describing who must of should be subscribed. This list will not include RALO lists or the multitude of working group and committee lists Currently there are five such lists. All are archived and are publicly viewable except as noted. ALAC - General ALAC list used for the majority of ALAC e-mail interactions. Originally only ALAC members, RALO leadership, formal Liaisons selected by the ALAC, Liaisons to the ALAC, At-Large Board member and Staff were on it. More recently, it has included (either by accident or intentionally), selected former ALAC member, selected former RALO leadership, and others. (I am using the term "formal Liaisons" to refer to the ccNSO, GNSO and SSAC Liaisons - those to other ICANN or external bodies.) ALAC-Internal - Used for things that we do not want to be publicly viewable. Most commonly, this is travel arrangements, social plans and occasionally semi-confidential issues or issues where we want targeted ALAC feedback. Membership is similar to the ALAC list, but no "others" ALAC-ExCom - Publicly viewable list for the ALAC ExCom. Membership is traditionally ExCom members, formal Liaisons appointed by the ALAC, and Staff. More recently a few others were added. ALAC-Announce - General list for announcements. Only ICANN staff and the ALAC Chair (I think) have sending privileges. This list includes pretty much everyone in the ALAC list plus about 175 others. At-Large - General public list. This list has Most but not all of those onthe ALAC list (missing about 10 ALAC members and RALO leadership) plus about 160 others. ALAC-Announce and At-Large membership overlaps. There are 98 people on both lists (about 1/3 of which are ALAC/RALO Leadership), 126 just ALAC-Announce and 98 just At-Large For mail sent to lists from senders not on the lists, there are four possible outcomes, it goes through, it is held for moderation, it bounces or it is discarded without a reject message (moderation requires staff action). Based on a test, I believe that for the ALAC list, such messages are discarded, for the ALAC-Internal list, such mail bounces, and for the ExCom it is moderated. Not sure about the two larger lists. My suggestions for going forward are: ALAC - Membership for ALAC, RALO Leadership, formal Liaisons appointed by the ALAC, Board member and Staff - Membership for Liaisons appointed TO the ALAC - Perhaps membership to WG Chairs if not already included above - Membership for past holders of above categories (my preference, or could be receive only - see below) ALAC-Internal - Membership for ALAC, RALO Leadership, formal Liaisons appointed by the ALAC, Board member and Staff ALAC-ExCom (with a new name mapping to the ALAC Leadership Team name used in the new RoP) - Members of the ExCom, formal Liaisons appointed by the ALAC, Board member and Staff I think we need to discuss the ALAC-Announce and At-Large lists further. I am not at all sure we need two lists for this. I suggest we create two additional lists that "shadow" the ALAC and ExCom lists. That is, subscription open to all and they receive all messages that got to the ALAC and ExCom lists. This allows those who want to follow the discussions to receive them without the inconvenience of having to go to the archive. This is equivalent to adding the to the lists in receive-only mode, but since we have had regular problems ensuring that the membership of the ALAC and ExCom lists is correct, having a shadow list would be a lot cleaner. Please let me know what you think about these issues. Alan