On  Wed, 24  Sep 1997  20:54:48 -0400  Vince Sabio  <[log in to unmask]>
said:

>I had answered your  message a couple of days ago, but  it seems to have
>been rejected  by the moderator.  (Interestingly, I posted a  message to
>the same list mere hours earlier that never went through a moderator.)
>
>(...)
>
>Eric Thomas is,  of course, the developer of LISTSERV.  My reply to your
>post was  very complimentary of Lyris,  which is a competing  product of
>LISTSERV.
>
>One might wonder  if there was a conflict of  interest in the moderator.
>;-)

I don't  appreciate your innuendo, Vince.  You joined the list  on Sep 21
and were set  to REVIEW automatically, like any other  new subscriber. If
you had checked  the archives before posting your  conspiracy theory, you
would have seen that we had to do that because AOL used LSTOWN-L in their
"How to subscribe to a LISTSERV list" example, and other sites pointed to
the AOL instructions  or copied them, etc. A lot  of people subscribed to
the list  thinking it was about  baseball or Pamela Anderson  or you name
it. You can't  possibly have posted to LSTOWN-L@SEARN a  few hours before
and  not have  been sent  through  the moderator.  You probably  bypassed
moderation  for your  earlier  message in  the same  manner  as with  the
present message,  by posting to [log in to unmask]  (which was
not in  the AOL example and  where there did not  seem to be any  need to
tighten things up).

As for why I didn't approve your  message, I can't find it in my mailbox.
Regretfully,  I don't  make a  good moderator,  especially for  LSTOWN-L.
Problem 1  is that the vast  majority of moderated submissions  come from
people who thought this  was a motorbike list and who  seem to think that
mail bombing the list is the  proper way to request assistance in signing
off. When I see  a barrage of 100 messages to approve  and the first 5-10
are  like that,  I tend  to delete  them all  because genuine  moderation
requests come at the rate of maybe  1-2/week. I know I shouldn't do this,
but I  haven't been able to  design a filter that  universally recognizes
mail bombs.  Problem 2 is that  SEARN runs LISTSERV.NET, which  is the #1
target for "Kaboom!" and the like. Sometimes I log in and find a thousand
messages from LISTSERV@SEARN in my mailbox (that's after filtering - they
find new tricks all the time), so I just delete them all.

>It also has some features that  are, to my knowledge, impossible to find
>anywhere else --  like the ability for any subscriber  to forward a copy
>of any list posting to a specific address, and automatically unsubscribe
>himself. No commands needed -- just forward ANY list mailing.

This as you know is highly  controversial as it requires every message to
be  customized  specifically  for   its  recipient.  Other  than  wasting
bandwidth, this significantly increases the amount of resources needed to
process the  message at  the RECEIVING  site. To  give just  one example,
L-Soft delivers some 1-1.5M messages to  AOL every day. While WE have the
resources to  customize each of  these messages  and send them  as 1-1.5M
separate transactions,  I'm not  sure AOL  would be  thrilled if  we (and
everyone else in the net) did that.  And what's worse, I'm not sure AOL's
users would be  thrilled either! They can already sign  off by writing to
[log in to unmask] (no command  needed), and list mail
is a lot  more useful if you get  it the same day that it  was sent. This
customization feature only works as long as a not too many people use it.
Technically, it is trivial to implement.

>Closely tied to  that feature is Lyris's ability to  handle bounced mail
>more efficiently  than any other server  I've ever used --  and I should
>know,

I run a large number of small  to moderate (~1k) size lists with LISTSERV
and I hardly ever see a bounce. I use a combination of active and passive
probing (in most  cases I just let the 1.8d  defaults apply) and LISTSERV
takes care of everything for me  in a much more resource-effective manner
than with  customized messages.  This is  something that  I can  apply to
large  destinations   like  AOL  without   having  to  worry   about  the
consequences.

>For example, if someone wants to  change his e-mail address on the list,
>he can simply go to the Web interface and change it himself. No more "my
>ISP changed names, can you change my e-mail address for me?"

You can also do that with LISTSERV (1.8d), but guess what?

>Well, I still *receive* those messages

Exactly :-) People don't know that they can do it themselves, so they ask
you anyway,  or they  ask on  the list.  Most *users*  never use  the web
interface, simply because all they ever need to do is post and reply, and
they prefer  to read their mail  using their mail program  than through a
web interface where they can't conveniently move mail messages to folders
in their mail programs and so on.

Users whose  e-mail address  changes with every  login, however,  are big
fans of  the web interface. This  allows them to post  to "Send= Private"
lists even if their ISP discovered  yet another variation on their e-mail
address today.  They set themselves to  REPRO so that they  can log their
own messages  when they get  their copy.  Personally, I would  still find
another ISP, but people in remote areas sometimes have limited choice.

>It also has built-in autoresponders  that are easy to configure, "action
>phrase" notification where you can  instruct the server to take specific
>actions (notify you, and/or return  a pre-recorded message, and/or etc.)
>in the  event it detects  (or doesn't  detect, etc.) some  specific text
>within a message to the server.

LISTSERV  has  supported  auto-responders   since  1.8b,  if  I  remember
correctly, and you can use various exits  to add new command verbs to the
system or then to  examine messages before they are posted  to a list and
take the  action of your  choice. These exits  are programs that  you can
write in the language of your choice and that are not limited to a series
of predefined actions.

  Eric