On another list, I made some statements regarding the efficiency or lack thereof, regarding the way Listserv postings are distributed ON individual hosts after they pass through Bitnet. Now, I am wondering if perhaps our Listserv, or our VM system itself, is being run properly in this regard. If this is a problem peculiar to this system, I would certainly like to know about it and have our systems people fix it. If, for example, 200 people on this system are signed up to a particular listserv distribution list, our system will end up holding 200 copies of every posting sent to that list; one for each subscriber. There are in fact, several lists which are very popular here and very prolific so this example is realistic. Are we doing something very wrong here on our system? It seems wasteful to have many copies of the same posting in this system's spool area when one copy for central access would do quite nicely. My understanding, however, is that this is just the way things are done on VM and that there's nothing anyone can do to change the situation. Perhaps I am wrong. If so, I'de like to know so I can ask our systems people to fix it. The reason I am posting this here because several people thought I was insane when this topic came up elsewhere. You know how insanity is, the victim is always the last to know. :) I heard that some sites have implemented a bulletin board system to centralize incoming Listserv postings. Is this what most sites do? Maybe there's an outside chance that its not necessary. I could probably implement this type of facility here, but it would take a while because I'me already too busy with other matters. Is there perhaps some way of improving the internal mechanism on VM systems to change the mode of distribution of incoming list postings that's not commonly known? From my account, I can easily see these replicated postings on our system's reader so this is definitely not a figment of my imagination as some people on another distribution list implied. I even wrote a SAS program a couple of years ago which summarizes our spool file situation. About a year or two ago, I had to use this program often to help head off problems resulting from the large volume of spooled files here. This was on our previous system. We still have many users who frequently have several hundred spooled files. The max is something like 30,000. If there's a way to improve this situation without implementing any user restrictions, I would certainly like to know. With about 3,000 users on this system, this situation can cause problems, although its been rare lately thanks to our bigger system. My disclaimer follows. Some of you probably saw my postings elsewhere regarding Listserv. Let's not continue that thread here, or privately. For the record, I happen to like and respect Listserv a lot. We intend to keep Listserv and Bitnet at Temple. Its also time to toot my own horn since I am feeling a little defensive right now. It is accurate to say that the reason why we have continued to run a Listserv here at Temple is almost entirely a result of my efforts at popularizing our Listserv in the past. The view among some managers here a year or two ago was that Listserv was silly because it had little to do with academic pursuits. It took a lot of posturing on my part to encourage those who held this view to reconsider. My goal now is simple. I want to get an answer to the above question. I will not participate in any long-winded debates on anything at this time. Any responses to my question will be appreciated. Take care everyone, Stan Horwitz Listserv Postmaster Temple University Acknowledge to: OASIS@TEMPLEVM (or VM.TEMPLE.EDU)