On Fri, 27 Sep 1996, LISTSERV Administrator wrote:
> >You don't describe what their objective is. It is difficult to rationalize
> >any particular "solution" without being told _why_ non-subscribers should
> >be allowed to post. Most rationales wither under the light of day.
> >Maybe you don't have a problem?
>
> Peter... you don't really work at a university, do you?  Sure, there are
> lots of reasons why a non-subscriber might need to post.
 
This email list will consist of a few hundred tenured M.D. professors in
our College of Medicine.  As anyone in an academic setting knows, tenured
means you can't force them to do anything they don't want to do.  (And if
they're good M.D. profs, you don't want to piss them off because they can
easily quit and earn much more money in private practice.)  Anyway,
subscribers of this email list will be faculty members only, and some
things discussed on the list should not be seen by non-faculty.  All the
these profs are smart, and many of them will love using email for such
faculty communications; other profs will hate it (or simply lack the time
to learn), and will tell their trusted secretaries to handle it for them
on a fulltime or occasional basis.  However, since we are a state-funded
school, we don't pay enough to get (or keep) top-notch secretaries, so we
want to make it easy for them too (especially the frequent new ones),
which is why confirmations aren't really viable.
 
Academia isn't private industry where you can simply fire people who don't
cooperate and pay enough to always hire support personnel with the
qualification you need.  This is the reality of academia, especially at a
state-funded school.  My job (and the job of this LISTSERV software) is to
help provide a more productive environment, which includes getting around
these institutional limitations instead of exacerbating them.
 
-david