>1.  Presently a limit of 8 characters exists.  I am studying a way to get
>    around this limit.  It would involve making LISTSERV act as a gateway
>    to a psuedo mail-only node (a new node name) within which it would
>    have total freedom to assign any userid acceptable to RFC822 it wants.
>
 
While I realize LISTSERV uses MAILER to send mail, I would hate to have
the ability to access a list depend on using a MAILER.  Many sites do
not use our mailer when sending to our users, either because they don't
have a MAILER of their own or their mailer doesn't know about our
MAILER.  For example, mail coming through the Wisconsin ARPA gateway
currently does not use MAILER.
 
I realize that this cost might be minor compared to the other benefits
Phil mentioned, such as more descriptive names, but I think we ought
to keep these points in mind.
 
Nick