I'm sorry that I made a mistake many years ago and did not implement the
correct precedence between REVIEW and "Editor=". I understand that this has
been an inconvenience for many people, but the fact is that the old
implementation was completely illogical, and as such confusing to people who
do not have 10 years of experience with the software and are trying to learn
how to moderate their list.

The REVIEW option was introduced at the same time as the EDITOR option, and
they have always been mutually exclusive. Turn REVIEW on, and EDITOR is
turned off automatically. It is impossible to have both options at once.
This has been the case from day one, and as far as I recall, nobody has ever
complained about it :-)

The pecking order for postings has five levels: full editors (defined in the
list header), subscribers with EDITOR, normal subscribers, subscribers with
REVIEW, and subscribers with NOPOST. This has been the case ever since the
REVIEW option was introduced.

The EDITOR option only grants a subset of the authority you receive when
listed in "Editor=". If you are listed in "Editor=", you automatically have
the privileges granted by the EDITOR option, and if you have EDITOR
privileges, you cannot be on REVIEW. It follows that if you are listed in
"Editor=", you cannot be on REVIEW. Ideally, LISTSERV should have turned off
the REVIEW option for anyone listed in "Editor=", just as it turns it off
when you turn EDITOR on, but this was at best very difficult to implement
efficiently since "Editor=" allows you to refer to other lists, which in
turn can refer to other lists and so on, all of which can change every
second. Adding a user to list X could force you to make changes to a
thousand subscriptions in a thousand other lists. It would have been a major
effort for what was only a minor feature, so I did not do it and generally
did not worry about this problem back when I introduced the REVIEW option.

Looking at the problem from another perspective, you can consider who issued
the conflicting instructions. The "Editor=" option comes from the list
configuration owner, in most cases the same person as the list owner, but
more and more organizations separate the duties, allowing only LISTSERV
administrators and the most knowledgeable list owners to change list
headers. The list owner can still manage the list on a day to day basis, but
cannot make changes to the list header. Although there is a new feature
allowing the LISTSERV administrator to enforce this distinction, many
organizations have done so informally before the feature was available.
Either way, the "Editor=" option comes from the highest level. The REVIEW
option on the other hand comes, at best, from the list owner (one step down
from the configuration owner). But in most cases it is automatically
generated as someone joins the list. There is a blanket order that every new
subscriber be put on REVIEW (and whatever other options may be applicable).
Blanket orders strike blindly and are the reason why my bank sent me an
advertisement for the credit card I already have in the same envelope that
contained the monthly statement for the credit card in question. Clearly,
the "Editor=" option comes from a more trustworthy source.

Taking yet another angle, you can ask yourself what it really means to have
every list member as an editor. If you were to set every subscriber to
EDITOR, you would effectively disable the editor feature. LISTSERV has
always worked this way and I do not remember anyone complaining about it.
Given this, it would be illogical for the EDITOR option to disable editor
functionality if granted to every subscriber, while the more powerful
"Editor=" keyword somehow would not have this effect. Generally speaking, a
new list owner trying to moderate his list is never going to come up with
the concept of a moderated list where everyone is an editor. This will only
happen if he hears about the Kludge from someone else or reads about it
somewhere. This entire discussion will be a non-issue because he will never
use "Editor= (MYLIST)". What would be very confusing though is if he used
"Editor= [log in to unmask],[log in to unmask]", added his assistant
to the list, and found out that the assistant could not post to the list
even though he is the primary editor. But, once deleted from the list, the
assistant can post! What would be the logic in that?

  Eric