Why not have LSoft setup AFD subscriptions for the manuals?  I would love
that.  The manuals I am interested in I would subscribe to.  The
ones I am not interested in I don't have to subscribe.  And the
entire set of manuals shoud be setup as a package so you could just
subscribe to the package if you wished.
 
Certainly the main list owners manual would be a good choice for
subscription.  And it would be nice if any new list owner could somehow
get a general welcome from Lsoft, perhaps still provided by their site
but written by LSoft with general directions.  These directions would
incluce how get manuals the first time, how to ask for AFD to keep
abreast of changes in manuals, ftp and email addresses for LSoft and
Lstown-l, and so forth.  I think this would help a lot.  It could be like
the MAILTPL file - a generic one provided by LSoft, but by having each
site postmaster distribute the generic welcome, the site can modify it if
they chose to add additional information, about their site perhaps.  And,
by having the site give it out, LSoft does not have any work to do
(except to write the thing the first time, which would not be hard).
 
Eric talks about 'scaling up' the software, but there needs to be
'scaling up' of the help and documentation... as more and more list
owners come on line, this will be increasingly important.  List owners
are not all technical people any more.  It needs to be easier.  I think
AFD subscriptions would certainly be easier than having to do ftp and so on.
And again, re: workload, I don't think it would be that hard for LSoft to
do AFD for the manuals, since the users submit their own AFD requests.
 
Kevin
 
On Fri, 25 Aug 1995, Nathan Brindle wrote:
> This has been fixed, see the web or ftp site for the 14 August revision.
> There are some extensive additions to chapter 2 regarding list security,
> take a look at http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/owner/listserv.html to see
> if the changes warrant downloading and printing a new copy.  I think
> I will be storing a Revision 2 in another few weeks, so it may not be
> cost effective in terms of printing another 100 pages if you already
> have a copy of the original release.