On the Listserv where my lists reside at midnight, for more than an hour,
the Listserv is busy sending out digests. Nothing else can get done. No web
interface. What can be done about this? Most of the lists do not have a
digest line in them, so they are using defaults. I see several possible
solutions:

(1) Having someone at the site edit every header and add a digest setting.
Since there are 1440 minutes in a day each list could have its own minute.
But this is a laborious task.

(2) Post on the owner's list and ask owners to add this line. Create a
chart starting with listname first letter showing them which time they
should use. This wouldn't spread everyone to their own minute, but you
could get the ones responding to put their list into the early morning.

(3) Use a distribute job and send a request to all non-quiet owners. But
does the Listserv produce such a list of addresses? On some lists a quiet
owner may be the one doing header changes. And you would still have a low
compliance rate.

(4) Get L-Soft to add some algorithm where lists with no Digest= setting
default to a calculated time and not to midnight. Based on the list name a
unique time could be derived, so it would go out at the same time each day.

Don. :-)