From the Orchid FAQ
I posted a question to Orchid, when it will be delivered?
Generally, you should allow up to 24 hours to your message to be
delivered to the Open forum or up to 48 hours to be delivered to the
digest format. Orchid subscribers list now contains more than 5,300
members. Currently, the average number of postings per day ranges
between 40 to 80. Thus, our list server handles around 500,000
outgoing E-mail messages a day from Orchid alone.
The Email clearing time depends, to some extant, upon the traffic
load and the overall conditions out on the Internet for the given
day.
Our biggest issue with getting your postings out to the list is the
fact that we MUST read everything that comes in before it gets sent
back out to the list.The reason we go through all this is to spare
you from having to suffer noise, junk mail, spam, repeated signature
files, etc…
We work hard to make the list content as clean and readable as
possible. The list moderation process is necessary to insure the
quality of material transmitted through the service.