I'm pretty sure none will be publicly available. The former list was
private, and you always needed to get permission from the person who
posted to forward their post to someone else. Putting up a public web
site with the archive, if the archive exists, would involve either
getting permission from a ton of people or getting blame from a ton of
people because you didn't get permission. Neither is attractive. As
a consequence, anything of value that happened on that list is
essentially lost.
I once asked why this was done, and at least one person who knew
refused to tell me. I am aware of two advantages of the old scheme:
1. It allowed people to speak their views with some confidence that
they wouldn't get back to their employer. This is still possible with
the present scheme; all you have to do is set up an anonymous remailer
account and subscribe it to the list. Doing it with the anonymous
remailer is more secure than trusting that all the subscribers will
respect the privacy of the list.
2. In some people's minds it allowed sending copyrighted material to
the list. Since the list was "private", this was not "publishing".
This seemed dubious to me.
I do not think either of these advantages was the cause of the
decision. The brief refusal to explain the history of the decision
mentioned AMIX (AMerican Information eXchange, now defunct), which
leads me to guess that there was an earlier time when the list was not
"private" and that someone tried to sell the archives of the list on
AMIX at that time.
History tends to repeat itself with more vigor when it is kept secret.
If my guess is right, then the current way of running the list is such
a repetition. Is anyone who knows the history willing to speak up
now?
>Is there at least one for the current one? Where can I find it?
Quoting a message from David McFadzean <david@lucifer.com> on Thu, 25
Jul 1996:
>You can find the hypermail archive at: http://www.lucifer.com/extropians/
I have tried this and it works.
Tim Freeman