|I'm not sure I understand. If I'm not making any of the templates different
|but only suppressing the generic welcome message, what would the
|listname.MAILTPL file contain?
|Just these two lines:
|
|  >>> $SIGNUP Standard message to new subscribers
|  ..QQ

Yes

|Or something else?

Nope.  One only places in the listname.MAILTPL those templates that
override/replace the default for the installation i.e., you need not
include any other templates from DEFAULT.MAILTPL into your listname.MAILTPL.

/Pete