>Is there any reason why you can't have lists with no subscribers? They could
>do all the notebooking and file serving of archives as usual but all of the
>subscribers would be on the original list at Bitnic. Your list would note be
>listsed as a peer but only as a subscriber.
Of course it could be done, but would you really like it? First of all, you
would get your notebooks from a server and send/receive mail from another
server. Not beeing an official peer, the redistribution point will not be
listed, automatically reviewed, etc, and less people will know about its
existence (this means more avoidable load on the net). If the central node is
down, the list will be blocked, while some mail could continue to be sent if
the list was peered. Distribute jobs will tend to be quite large, perhaps 5
times the size of a normal piece of mail -- this can imply some additional
delays if the net is very loaded. People will have to send mail to the other
end of the net, and so wait much more to know if their mail has been
processed. Since you'll have tons of unofficial redistribution lists, you'll
get a silly message saying that your mail has been processed for each list --
a message that you'll not be able to control, because you'll not be directly
subscribed to that list...
All the preceding, assuming that, as you say, the list is empty and only used
for notebook archival purposes. But this is usually not the case. For example,
approximately only one half of the LIAISON subscribers are directly subscribed
to BITNIC (146 over 274 -- note that the list was not exploded because it is
not peered); there are 8 LISTSERV redistribution lists and at least 8 private
non-listserv local lists more. This is a fact, and as such needs to be faced.
Pretending that it does not exist is ignoring reality; switching to mail-via=
distribute is good, but what about the possible peers? (This is for the NIC,
not for you, Scott).
LISTSERV was designed as a *distributed* server; PLEASE don't go back to a
centralized model.
Jose Maria
P.S. Someone has asked it: Mail-Via= Distribute can be used with peers without
problems.
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