> I will guess that perhaps 95% (a random figure) of Listserv users should
> be presumed to have a certain level of net sophistication, but I hope that
> there will be some place for the perhaps ~5% of net users who are still truly
> neophyte, and that Listserv utilities will continue to be available (and
> developed) for those list-owners who want, or feel, that they need to
> serve those who are new to the nets.
 
The LISTSERV client that was announced recently should be a help to
neophyte users -- if they have it.  It is unfortunate that it will be
generating email messages to LISTSERV rather than operating in a true
client-server manner.  This means that response to requests will not be
immediate.  I suppose that problem in doing that (besides the obvious
extra work of implementing another protocol), is the lack of a good way
to authenticate the user.  If you use passwords, how to assign
passwords to new users is a problem.  It's also a problem to keep the
users from forgetting their passwords.