Thanks Wayne. Let me see if I understand what you are saying. > > You might consider omission of the discussion topic, allowing "other" to > be discussion. Asking people to discuss stuff by always starting > their subject lines with "Discussion:" or "D:" will be very difficult, > unless there are very few discussionists. So I would consider using.. > > * Topics= News,Adv > * Default-Topics= All > I had no intention that subscribers use D or DISCUSSION to participate in discussions. I want them to continue to do what they have always done - just post a message with whateever they want as the subject. I want to configure listserv such that these messages go to all subscribers EXCEPT those for whom I have SET TOPICS: NEWS,ADV. This latter group would ONLY get messages that **I** post with the properly formatted subject line. I guess I can eliminate the DISCUSSION topic altogether and set default=ALL as you suggest to achieve this? > When you want someone to be in your news/adv-only group, you simply > remove "Other" as one of their topics. > You mean SET TOPICS: -OTHER? > The chances of someone beginning a subject line with "News:", with > ignorance of your topics is small, IMHO. > > There is, however, a good chance of someone replying to one of your > "News:" postings using the same subject line ... and so now your > news-only subscribers are viewing discussion! Since you cannot > authorize posting by topic, your only choice will be to intervene via > moderation. > I can see some one posting their own ad using ADV in the subject line ;-) However, I moderate the list, so this won't be a problem. John