>I know that most of the time subscribers should have the freedom to
>leave a list.  But I have a question about this.
>
>Our faculty association wants to set up a mailing list that will have
>all members of the association on the list, no-one else.  The purpose
>of the list is to distribute notices about union activities.   We have
>some members who are not likely to want to remain on the list, but just
>as they automatically have a mailbox for snailmail where notices can get
>sent, so we want them on this list.  If they want to delete everything
>we send, fine;  this would be parallel to tossing all memos in the
>garbage without reading them.

Arguably unsubscribing or SETting their subscriptions to nomail is
also equivelent to this, though I'm sure you've been through this
argument many a time already.

>Ideally we would like to have a list setting something like "Deletion=Owner";
>but of course there is no such thing.  We would also like some sort of
>notification if someone decides to set themselves to NOMAIL.  Are these
>possible?  Normally I can think of dozens of good reasons NOT to have
>settings like that.  But I've been asked to find out.
>
>Guess who the list administrator will be?

There's a FAQ entry dealing with this issue at
http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/owner-faq.stm#19 .

It's not mentioned there, but you could also set Notify= Yes and then
just keep an eye out for unsubscribes.

As far as SET listname NOMAIL goes, there is a list exit (list exits
are briefly mentioned in the FAQ entry pointed to above) for SET
commands issued by a nonowner; see section 5.2.3 for a description of
this (and chapter 5 for a discussion of list exits in general).  More
easy might be to send a weekly

        Q listname WITH NOMAIL FOR *@*

command and see what addresses, if any, show up.

Of course you're sending unsolicited email and it may generate some
complaints; I assume this is a discussion you've had with the people
who want the mailing list set up, though.
--
Jacob Haller, Technical Support
L-Soft international, Inc
http://www.lsoft.com/