On Mon, 16 Sep 1996 20:36:54 MDT, you said:
> I received several more administrative messages in the LISTSERV list that
> I manage over the last few days.  When I saw that it also happens here
 
No, what you saw was a novice user's *guess* at what an administrative
message may look like.  The distinction is important...
 
> Idea 1.  There are lots of lists maintained by my Internet service
> provider and I may be able to talk them in to doing something.  Would it
> be possible for my provider to set up a script to sreen messages addresed
> to the list before they hit the LISTSERV program and dispose of those with
> unofficial commands like remove and unsubscribe.
 
The LSOFT Listserv already does filtering for actual commands, and sends back
a "your mail was not posted because it appeared to be a Listserv command,
and should have been sent to listserv@....." mail message.
 
How do you decide what an "unofficial" command is?  How many different
synonyms for "unsubscribe" can you come up with?  "remove". "drop me".
"cancel me". "please nullify my subscription"..  I've seen all of them.
 
You can't even say "reject all messages under N lines" - if the guy has
a 'signature' attached, his one-line command may be 5 or 7 lines long.
On the other hand, a "Does anybody know where to find a copy of XYZ?" posting
could easily run to only 1 or 2 lines...
 
Bottom line:  It's very hard to make anything idiot-proof.  Mother Nature
keeps evolving new, improved idiots.
--
                                Valdis Kletnieks
                                Computer Systems Engineer
                                Virginia Tech