Here is some additional information on the restricted/open and private/public thing.
The defunct FK Yahoo Groups, VachonLovesNickFic and NickLovesLacroix were both open membership groups whose archives could only be read by members. The links lead to their homepages on the Wayback Machine (from 2002 and 2001 respectively).
If you look at the Group Settings on the far right, you can see that "Open membership" and "Archives for members only" are listed separately. This suggests that—whatever the current situation—at one time they were indeed separate options.
Secondly, the Raven Awards Yahoo Group (now a restricted group whose archives are open to anyone) originally had open membership. In 2002 they started to have spam comments, to the despair of the moderator. Evidently people provided off-list advice, because in Post No. 1223 (22 November), the list was taken to restricted status. However, the archives continue to be readable by anyone, presumably because privacy was not an issue.
Private vs Public Yahoo Groups
The defunct FK Yahoo Groups, VachonLovesNickFic and NickLovesLacroix were both open membership groups whose archives could only be read by members. The links lead to their homepages on the Wayback Machine (from 2002 and 2001 respectively).
If you look at the Group Settings on the far right, you can see that "Open membership" and "Archives for members only" are listed separately. This suggests that—whatever the current situation—at one time they were indeed separate options.
Secondly, the Raven Awards Yahoo Group (now a restricted group whose archives are open to anyone) originally had open membership. In 2002 they started to have spam comments, to the despair of the moderator. Evidently people provided off-list advice, because in Post No. 1223 (22 November), the list was taken to restricted status. However, the archives continue to be readable by anyone, presumably because privacy was not an issue.