First, Jack Fairservice didn't answer  because he has left Virginia Tech.
Second, yes the change is due to  a change in LISTSERV, whose goal was to
make  DISTRIBUTEd lists  (like  SAS-L) behave  like non-DISTRIBUTEd  ones
(like SAS-L when you first subscribed), and to save network bandwidth. It
may be  confusing to you,  but it means your  mailer is getting  only one
network file  for (say) 5  readers rather than  5 network files,  each of
them for 1 reader. However, I am  VERY surprised to hear that the line in
question is longer than 80 bytes.  LISTSERV is submitting the mail to the
VM mailer in a way that,  technically, prevents it from putting more than
80 bytes per line. Unless the  note went through a gateway that reformats
the mail  headers, I don't see  how you could  have received a line  > 80
characters from the list.
 
  Eric