On Sun, 15 Feb 1998 12:45:45 -0500 Don Wiss <[log in to unmask]> said:

>But a calendar day only for those in the same time zone.

Most LISTSERV setups  are funded by local lists,  especially in academia.
That  is,  people   get  the  money  by  saying  that   all  these  local
administrative lists have to be run to save money, and then they may also
run other lists on the side ;-) The local lists are usually for people in
the same campus as the server and  this is why the default digest time is
midnight. Another  consideration is that  most countries lie  entirely in
one time zone, and  in these countries people are not  used to time zones
at all  (although they do  know of the concept)  and will want  things to
work "as expected", ie midnight to  midnight. It would make absolutely no
sense to a  German to have digests  start at another time  because "it is
then midnight in Singapore  and this is as good a  reference time zone as
any".

>Midnight on the US East Coast is peak usage time on the West.

Maybe for  dial-up access, but not  for mailing lists. Most  mailing list
usage is  still from  business premises  with a  huge decline  during the
weekend  (whereas  there  are  lists where  usage  increases  during  the
evenings and  weekend). Midnight EST is  one of the lowest  usage periods
worldwide as it is still too early  (6am) for Europe to see much activity
at all whereas even in the West  Coast most people are out of the office.
But this is not why this cut-off time was chosen, it is just to make it a
calendar day in the server's own time zone.

  Eric