We have some 4500 courses lists. With scripts, we daily add and delete new
members to each course/list. If a student ought to be on a list (i.e he is
registered to the course) and he removed himself, he will be added the next
morning. This works great. Of course, if students knew about setting their
account to NOMAIL, they could bypass this mechanism..

There is another way no one mentioned so far:

Have the list members reside on a DBMS list, to which Listserv will have a R/O
link .. No member could then delete himself, or change his settings. Of course,
you'll need to manage the list (adding/deleting members) through the DBMS
interface, which isn't too bad (we do it for another large set of lists)

Cheers,

Moshe

On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, Paul Russell wrote:

> Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 09:47:06 -0500
> From: Paul Russell <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: LISTSERV give-and-take forum <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Need list exit to prevent signoff
>
> Thank you to all who responded to my question, both on and off the list.
>
> Several respondents suggested locking the lists to prevent subscribers from
> leaving. This would be effective, however, it is neither politically acceptable
> nor fool-proof.
>
> Some respondents suggesting refreshing the subscriber lists periodically, using
> data from outside sources. Thousands of course-related lists are refreshed
> nightly. The all-faculty list and its sub-lists are refreshed weekly. The
> all-staff and all-student lists are refreshed by the respective list owners, at
> their discretion.
>
> --
> Paul Russell
> Senior Systems Administrator
> University of Notre Dame
>