Hi,
We're looking at setting up an email archive site for certain lists related to our niche. We've been considering using archives.ourdomain.com versus ourdomain.com/archives. Part of the problem is that while the archives won't initially have huge amounts of content, over time it'll outstrip the amount of content we produce and I was worried about whether or not this would cause a duplicate content penalty as the emails will also be archived elsewhere.
If the volume of mails over time combined with duplication penalties are going to penalise the site, I'd rather we used a subdomain or a separate domain. If not, then subdomains might be the way to go.