On Wed, 11 Feb 1998 13:21:48 -0600, Sue M Hollander <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>I recently (last fall) set up listservs to allow faculty and staff at the
>U of I College of Medicine in Rockford to communicate with our three
>classes of medical students.  Everything was going fine until winter
>break, when all of the students started receiving messages that they
>needed to renew their subscriptions to these moderated listservs.  The
>Dean at the COM here wants me, as one of the list owners, to change these
>listservs so that they do not come up for renewal again.  (Each listserv
>should run for three years - the time each class of students is here in
>Rockford.)  I looked in the listserv owner's manual and followed the
>instructions to erase the "Renewal" line from the header.  This did not
>work.  I have sent messages to people at UIC, but still have not resolved
>this problem.  Has anyone on this list removed the renewal line from the
>header?  Can you help me?  Thanks in advance.

While I hate to disagree with the Dean, it is important for the List Admins
to keep mail flowing smoothly, monitor for bad addresses, etc as things are
always in some state of flux.  So I suggest you do not turn off renewal, in
spite of what they think.  (I'm assuming the actual lists come out of the
UIC LISTSERV site in Chicago, which is running 1.8c)

Instead set  Renewal= 4-monthly,Delay(7),Probe

With the 'Probe' qualifier, the renewal message that is sent out at the
renewal date will be an innocuous message that requires and expects no
response (unless the address is bad for some reason).  Without the 'Probe'
the subscriber/student gets a 'request to renew' msg which *must* be
responded to or they will be dropped from the list, clearly what the Dean is
objecting to.

By changing to a 4-month interval, your renewal times will not fall within
the usual vacation periods which was an additional objection.