I've come to concusion that with distribute backbone most of
the new peerings arent needed for the sake of network load.
Most of us developing even more complex peer list networks just
want to keep local notebook archives. A list without subscribers
would suffice and the archives kept public if there were a possibility
to automatically forward ALL subscriptions etc. to the listserv
actually housing the users. That could be achieved via a simple FOR
command from the local listserv to the actual one. Maybe even mail
not already coming through some other listserv could be forwarded to
the hub list but it isn't essential. This simple command forwarding
(excluding GET for notebooks if available) could be easily used even
by non-backbone servers.
    In the future all servers that had somewhat current PEERS NAMES
or LISTSERV GROUPS style information available could use it to
forward the commands to the approbiate place. This doesn't mean that
I oppose all the peering thing but in most cases the elaborate work
done to set up complex peer structures is just for keeping local archives
because the load distribution isn't an issue anymore.
    Another feature greatly needed for this type of lists as well as
some other cases is to be able to define COMPLETELY SILENT lists that
don't annoy users with those acknowledge messages (Ack= Silent?).
That's sometimes a real pain, I remember when I used Ricky's listserv,
which I hacked quite a lot, to redistribute bitnic lists many users
complained of those funny messages coming from somewhere saying something like
"0 messages has been distributed to 0 users" (I kept only notebooks then).
I finally silenced the whole listserv by removing ALL ack messages and
it helped.
    I'm sure that there's great need for carefree subdistribution lists
from which nobody should ever hear anything even if errors occur. There
are actually lots of this type of lists going all over (just review info-vax).
 
Harri