Dear List Owners,
 
On March 21st Shahrukh Merchant wrote:
 
> There are three questions on Topics whose answers I have not been able to
> ascertain myself.  Perhaps someone can help here.
>
> 1. What does the NONE reserved topic do?
>    a) If I include it as the topic name of a message I send to the list?
>       Does it go to no-one?  (What would be the point of that?)
>    b) Are there circumstances in which listserv will insert it (as it
>       does for OTHER)?
>    c) Is it true that I cannot specify it in Topics= and Default-Topics=?
>
> 2. What does the OTHERS reserved topic do?
>    a) - c) Same as above
>
> 3. Does the "Default-Topics=" keyword have the same no-reordering
>    restriction as Topics=?
>
 
Then on April 4th Eric Thomas sent some documentation from release
1.7f regarding topics.  However it doesn't really answer the questions.
 
The key sentence is:
 
> In  addition, topic names may not start  with a plus or minus
> sign, and  the words ALL, NONE, RE, OTHER and OTHERS are reserved.
 
My concern is the same as Shahrukh's.  Namely what is topic NONE?
How does it get set?  Why is it set?
 
The reason for my concern is that since I established topics about
six weeks ago about 1/3 of the subscribers in my list now have
Topics=None.  This was not done either by the subscriber or by me.
As a consequence, as best I can tell (I've telephoned a few of them)
they haven't gotten any postings since topics were established.  They
simply think the listserv is more quiet than usual.  This is a
relatively low volume listserv.
 
I'd appreciate any further documentation that anyone has as to how
this "feature" works.
 
Bill Bauriedel