> Date:         Mon, 30 Sep 1996 14:27:54 -0400
> From: David Nessl <[log in to unmask]>
>
> This email list will consist of a few hundred tenured M.D. professors in
> our College of Medicine.
> subscribers of this email list will be faculty members only, and some
> things discussed on the list should not be seen by non-faculty.
> ... other profs
> will tell their trusted secretaries to handle it for them
> on a fulltime or occasional basis.
 
So, _for example_, you subscribe all these MD's, and then you
make the list SEND= Public (or as you learned, effectively
SEND= "from campus only").
 
Now, everyone with a beef can send email to it; everyone with anything
to "announce" to these MDs can send to them _all_! Cool.
 
Now that you have provided a little more detail, how about having
list editors? The editors include one "real" editor plus all subscribers,
so the MDs and select others can post without bothering the editor. All
others (i.e, those not subscribed) will have their messages go through
the editor where the totally inappropriate stuff can be filtered out
or re-directed?
 
There are variations on this theme which might serve you even better,
again depending of the details of your audiences and objectives,
by employing, again _for example_, such personal subscriber Options
as NOeditor, NOpost, Post, Editor, or by setting up more than
one list, etc.
 
Can't afford an Editor, you say? OK. Then, the Docs or their
message takers are going to receive some as-yet unknown level of
unwanted messages and will have to live with that fact.
 
> ... so we
> want to make it easy for them too (especially the frequent new ones),
> which is why confirmations aren't really viable.
 
Again, "confirm" is done in reply (you press the "Reply" key) to a message
and all you type is the word OK. That is an easy three keystokes after
reading about fifteen words in the message (and once you've done
it once, you never have to do it again).  (LISTSERV even lets you
tailor the default message they must read which tells them to press
the Reply key and type OK, to be really short and clear.)
 
But, that's all moot because you do not want just anyone to subscribe
since you said you don't want some people to be able to read the
messages or archives (will there be archives?).
 
So, just ADD all the trusted posters (i.e, the MD's and select other
ones) and relieve them of the task.
 
>   This is the reality of academia,
 
Those added details you provided above help to further describe the
particular piece of your reality that you are trying to address
with LISTSERV.  That's all I suggested you provide.
 
>   My job (and the job of this LISTSERV software) is to
> help provide a more productive environment, which includes getting around
> these institutional limitations instead of exacerbating them.
 
OK. But you came to this list with a request for help, and balked
at supplying some more specific information, choosing instead to chide.
No one on this list was trying to exacerbate your problem.
 
Whether or not the additional details are adequate, and/or my
further suggestions of ways to use LISTSERV are adequate in the
context of your needs and supplied details remain to be seen.
I just toss them out as examples of what might be possible and useful.
Peter R