Marty, the whole story, which is in fact very simple, is this:
 
- At  the beginning,  there  was  no 'techrep'  or  'inforep' concept  on
  BITNET. The only thing there was  is the EARN 'NAD' concept, defined as
  being the person in :CONTACT, or anyone in a :ACONTACTn with :ACONTFORn
  containing the words 'System Contact'. I don't know if a '.' at the end
  is supposed to be legal, because  there was no exact formal definition.
  LISTSERV doesn't  accept a dot at  the end, maybe NETSERV  does, anyway
  it's irrelevant to Bill's problem.
 
- BITNET   introduced  the   'techrep'   and   'inforep'  concepts,   and
  corresponding tags  in BITEARN  NODES. Originally, neither  NETSERV nor
  LISTSERV supported it as being the same  as NAD; one of the reasons was
  that it wasn't really  clear which of the 2 reps  was the equivalent of
  the NAD, and  it was of course  still possible for the  sites to define
  NADs using the :CONTACT, etc.
 
- BITNIC  (that was  the previous  "generation") complained  that NETSERV
  couldn't  be used  for  node  management in  BITNET  because it  didn't
  support the  'techrep', so  Bert changed it  to recognize  the :TECHREP
  person as  being a  NAD. I  didn't change  anything because  nobody had
  complained  that "LISTSERV  could  not be  used  for mail  distribution
  because it doesn't know about the techreps", and it was still not clear
  which of  the reps  is supposed to  signoff expired  accounts; finally,
  most  nodes already  had a  :CONTACT at  that time,  so it  was more  a
  religious problem than anything else.
 
- The new  version of BITEARN NODES,  which is expected to  take over any
  time before Jan  1, 2000, contains very clear  "role definitions". When
  it does take over, I will have no problem introducing support for this.
  Meanwhile, I still don't know which rep is supposed to do what exactly;
  I am sorry to hear that  BITNET people have problems getting :ACONTACTn
  tags in their  node entries, but I'm  afraid there is nothing  I can do
  about that.
 
So, if you  really insist, I could recognize :TECHREP  and/or :INFOREP in
the  next  release, but  the  software  would  label  them as  "NADs"  in
messages, help files, etc.
 
  Eric