This is long and I apologize for the length and if I offend anyone, but I
don't post often. :-) I think there is something important that has been
touched on by a few comments on this issue that I would like to first
exaggerate with the following statement (in a context) and focus on with
your tolerance.

LSOFT, stay out of "policy enforcement" as it relates to List Owner
management unless you think long and hard about the consequences.

I wonder, how far do you go when you start asking a vendor to make their
software assume a responsibility that has always been on the subscriber,
under the subscriber's contol and intimately related to the educational
process of learning to use Listserv and be a responsible member of a list.
I just get a little uneasy with this idea because although the emphasis in
the above statement appears to be "on the subscriber", the implications
that I worry about, in my role, have more to do with the List Owner.

I have been asked by our List Owners everything from "Can listserv prevent
file attachments?" to "Can listserv bounce back mail that contains these
bad words?", all of which, of course, you will find in their "Posting
Rules" for each list.  For one reason or another (and I know there are
many), some List Owners would prefer to find a software/technical solution
rather than be put in the position of having to enforce the posting policy
of their list. Here, some List Owners will look for every opportunity to
"enforce a policy" and feel insulted if you give them a software solution
while others will feel very inadequate.  We had one List Owner who would
have loved the feature up for discussion last year because he fell into
the latter group, but has since developed some skills and confidence at
dealing with some horrid policy violations on his list in a more effective
way.  I *know* that a technical solution from LSOFT would have left him
that way!  I also believe that the escalation of what happen on his list
was directly related to his inability to deal with the situation from the
onset; quickly and without reservation.

While some List Owners at Queen's will blame what they call the "kind of
totally new and clueless subscriber" you see these days, I submit that we
are also seeing a "new kind of List Owner".  They just don't come fully
trained anymore (mostly by *you* folks) from years of being on one of your
lists, which is why, as some of you know from participating, we now train
new list owners who want to run Internet lists.  I think the days of
"learning by being a member" are going away and I wouldn't want a software
solution from LSOFT to turn List Owners in the *future* into only knowing
how to say "It is the default of the list" (e.g., "* sizelim= 200" and
possibly "* badword= fuck").  Maybe I'm wrong and perhaps I'm over stating
things, but I would hate to see one of the few rewards of List Ownership
disappear as the number of software solutions to strictly "policy
management" problems increases.  If you don't know what that reward is,
just scan the archives of this list for all of the complaints about
subscriber/policy enforcement problems and ask yourself, WHY do they still
do it????

Anyway, thanks for getting this far and sorry if I offended anyone.

--Trish

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Trish Forrest, Ph.D
Listserv Postmaster   [log in to unmask]
Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario