Jay Honeck wrote:

The main drawback of Yahoo Groups is the requirement to "join" the group
through a rather extensive series of web-based forms. I know a lot of our
old-timers (and some of our young-timers, too!) regard using the internet
as a giant pain in the butt, and I fear they would take one look at it and
throw their hands up in frustration.

Most mailing list software makes joining far simpler than Yahoo. But there
will be a confirmation process through which your members will have to go.
It should be as easy as replying to a message or "clicking" upon a link in
an email they receive.

Unfortunately, to fail to confirm is to invite a system to be abused. It's
the sad truth of today's Internet.

There is some software which you can run on your own local machine that will
let you run a small broadcast-only list. But many ISPs prohibit this sort
of thing because a spammer could be using it as easily as you. Again: an
unfortunate truth of how things have evolved.

- Andrew