On Fri, 30 Dec 1994 08:10:03 -0600, Winship <[log in to unmask]> said:
>And I'ld like to see an explanation as to why one shouldn't reorder the
>topics and leave a blank in the line if you take one out.
>        Douglas Winship    Austin, Texas    [log in to unmask]
 
This seems pretty adequately explained in the 1.7f release notes.  Please
refer to the notes for complete description.
Bill
 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Through the "Topics=" keyword, the list  owner can define up to 11 topics
for the list. For instance, the list owner could code:
 
               Topics= News,Benchmarks,Meetings,Beta-tests
 
        ********************************************************
        * WARNING - YOU MUST NEVER REORDER THE TOPICS= KEYWORD *
        ********************************************************
 
To save disk  space, LISTSERV remembers which topics  users have selected
through  their ordering  in the  "Topics="  keyword. That  is, "News"  is
"topic number 1"  for LISTSERV, "Benchmarks" is "topic number  2", and so
on. This means you can change the name of a topic without requiring users
to alter their subscriptions (for instance, you could decide that "Tests"
is a  better name than "Beta-tests"  and just make the  change). However,
you must never  change the order of the topics  in the "Topics=" keyword.
If you want to remove a topic,  replace it with a comma. For instance, to
remove the "Meetings" topic, you would change the keyword to:
 
               Topics= News,Benchmarks,,Beta-tests
 
This restriction might be removed in a future release.