Les wrote:

>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

I think you are right, but if you put the list on hold, and then retrieve
and modify the list header file to include moderation for a period of
time, and then free the list, you will get all of that spam to your box,
and you can safely delete it without ok'ing it back to LISTSERV to
distribute it, I *THINK*....

It is quite possible that I am wrong here, and if I am, please, somebody
correct me so I learn to do things the right way.

Glenn