Sorry I didn't explain what NOTIFY actually was -- I thought I had previously done so in this list but it was in a private mail. Well, the main problem when "linking" LISTSERVs together is that they tend to send either an acknowledge- ment or a copy of the mail file (in the BITNIC-type case) back to the sender. If the sender is a distribution list, guess what will happen to the mail? It will get distributed... Hence a second acknowledgement, which gets distributed again, etc, etc. :-( My LISTSERV does not send back a copy of the original mail but an acknowledgement mailfile with "Subject: Ack: original_subject"; and it will NOT distribute anything with a subject starting with "Ack:". However, this does not cover the problem of linking BITNIC-type listservs to FRECP11-type ones, not to mention the unnecessary network load caused by the acknowledge- ment. Hence the NOTIFY userid@node ON | OFF command, which allows the postmas- ter to suppress notification mail (of all kind -- this includes ADD and DELete acknowledgements) to the specified userid. That way a FRECP11-type LISTSERV linked to a BITNIC-type one as "listener" will not send back anything. Linking it as "speaker" is tricky because the BITNIC-type LISTSERV will send back a copy of the mail to the LIST userid. Therefore any mail file with a filename of "LISTSERV" and destined for distribution is transferred to the postmaster for manual verification ( :-( ); he can CP CHANGE it NAME X MAIL and TRANSFER it back to the server if needed. There is of course no problem with two FRECP11- type LISTSERVs since the mail file comes from the list userid itself. Eric