On Mon, 17 Nov 1997, John Witherspoon wrote:

> What is the best way to shut down a list temporarily?
>
> For instance, say someone is a sole owner of a list and has clueless
> subscribers who may want to get off but can't without the owner's help, or
> say someone wants to shut a highly spam-attractive list down while he's
> away to prevent the chance of an attack while he's not around to take
> corrective action...

and was answered by Glenn Alperin:

> You can put the list on hold.
>
> Send the following command to LISTSERV:
>
> hold listname
>
> and when you return, you can take the list off of hold by sending the
> following comand to LISTSERV:
>
> free listname
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> Glenn

I don't think that will help with the spam messages.  They won't appear
while the list is being held, but as soon as you free the list, all
the held messages will be processed.

                                                     Les