After investigation it  appears that the people in charge  of LISTSERV at
PTEARN have attempted to set up  an INFO-VAX peer without asking the list
owners for permission (actually, I am pretty sure they have not even been
notified). The result is a loop due  to the lack of LISTSERV expertise of
the  people in  question. This  is the  second time  that this  happens -
PTEARN had already attempted to set up a peer for the LINKFAIL list and I
had complained to them (I got apologies, and an offer to peer to EARNTECH
instead). I would like to remind the PTEARN staff that:
 
1. It is technically impossible to  set up a peer without the cooperation
   of the  owner of the existing  list. All that you  can achieve without
   such cooperation  is a kind of  "half-peer", which may act  like a sub
   list or may  create loops, but will  never be recognized as  a peer by
   the network.
 
2. There is presently  no technical need to set up a  peer for *any* list
   in Portugal. There would need to be two orders of magnitude more users
   to justify one.  A sub-list can be  easily set up if you  want to have
   postings locally archived for the PTEARN users.
 
3. LISTSERV  is not  a toy,  but a tool.  Its purpose  is to  help people
   communicate with each other; if  this happens to further the political
   goals of managers who are concerned about the visibility of their site
   and  its "importance"  on the  network,  fine. If  it doesn't,  sorry.
   Setting up peers in such an uncoordinated fashion just for the sake of
   being  able  to  have  peers  is  irresponsible,  and  should  not  be
   tolerated.
 
I hope that the problem will be corrected soon, and will not re-occur.
 
  Eric
 
*---------------------- Original message follows -----------------------*
I might be panicking unnecessarily, but there might be a loop on the
INFO-VAX mailing list; since that list has such a high volume and such
a high number of subscribers, I figured that it was better to post
quickly.
 
Below are portions of the headers I've received; the message text was
identical.  I have received at least ten pairs of identical messages
form that list today; in each case, the headers look like the ones
below.  The "Comments:" field make me thing that there is something
odd going on at [log in to unmask]
 
(headers deleted for the sake of brevity)