I had the opportunity today for a personal growth experience.  Working
with LISTEARN.  It was not a voluntary situation, as one of the peers
of what is know as the BITNCLST grouping was being phased out,
and I decided to unpeer it, rather than move it.  For those whom
BITNCLST is a new term, it is a set of lists(APPLICAT, BITNEWS,
NODMGT-L, MAIL-L, XMAILER, et al) which started out at BITNIC,
but in the days before Bitnet-II, quickly out grew the networks
ability to deliver.  Seven sites agreed to peer the lists
(UGA, MARIST, BITNIC, DEARN, HEARN, EB0UB011, and FINHUTC).
Jose Marie Blanco, then of EB0UB011, developed a set of filelist
structures using the .it and .ik keywords for lists.  (Quiz time,
how many out there know what .it and .ik are used for with out
searching the archives?)  EB0UB011 is being turned off RSN.
It is now a LISTEARN 1.3 site.
 
Some of my experiences:
 
  - I was not able to issue what I know as GET BITNCLST FILELIST (CTL
to LISTEARN.  I searched the INFO files, the online help, and the LSTERN-L
archives, and I still can't figure out how to get a FILELIST so that I
can update it and store it back on the LISTEARN.  MAybe (CTL was added
after the split, but that's not my problem, and I didn't want to
store a FILELIST that I knew was going to be incorrect.
 
 - GET listname defaults to the GLOBAL on LISTEARN, and heaven help me
guess the option necessary to GET only the local copy of a peered list.
It sure isn't documented anywhere listed above.  So when I did a
GET APPLICAT to EB0UB011, I then had to go around to the other 6 sites
and unlock APPLICAT.  Can you say rising bloodpressure?
 
 - I had done my work, and wanted to store a dummy APPLICAT LIST back
with a confidential=yes.  It worked.  I got on another account and
issued a TELL LISTSERV AT EB0UB011 LIST, and APPLICAT was gone from the
list.  Great.  So I try it for the next list, BITNEWS.  Only it is
still listed in the output of LIST, and with the old title.  So I GET it
again, it the keywords are correct.  But it still appears in LIST.  I
store it again, and it still looks the same.  So I go home, and look again,
and it has magically disappeared.  I check the postmaster of EB0UB011
to make sure it isn't Rod Serling.  Can you say out of sync databases?
How about manually assisted receding hairline?
 
 - During the process, I attempt to EXPLODE APPLICAT (WITHOUT EB0UB011
PREFER UGA FOR UGA.  The move file looked great.  I updated the password
and sent it in.  LISTSERV@EB0UB011 accepted it and sent off the info
to DEARN and HEARN for processing.  DEARN and HEARN sent nice little
notices back to EB0UB011 who promptly got a Rexx error, and forgot
all about removing the people from EB0UB011.  After retrying(its
software, it can't happen twice in a row), I gave up and manually
did a GET on all LISTS, merged the names into the lists here, and exploded
lists locally.  This LISTSERV could handle the responses from HEARN and
DEARN.
 
 
I admit to being a little biased, based on previous bad experiences
with LISTEARN sites.  However, I attempted to look at this with an
open mind, and tryied to be fair.  I found LISTEARN to be unintuitive,
cumbersome, poorly document(by LISTSERV standards) and just plain buggy.
I afraid that I am now of the opinion that my feelings of LISTEARN
were not overly critical, but overly generous, and that I had pegged
it too high on the ladder.  I hope that my experiences are isolated,
and that I can be proved wrong at some future time.
 
/ahw