John, this was a philosophical discussion. There is presently no way you can tell other LISTSERVs that you accept DISTRIBUTE jobs for just your node. The point is that if it has to be implemented, it's probably going to be hardcoded (ie there is a LISTSERV at node X --> node X gets DISTRIBUTE jobs for all its local node users). If you think I'm going to check with each non-backbone server (the ones most difficult to get info from) that all their lists are either (a) non-peered, (b) peered to a FILES=NO list or (c) configured to accept DISTRIBUTE jobs for local node users and properly registered, you're wrong :-) Okay if I set up the rules and warn people that a loop may arise if they break them and someone does reak them, it won't be my fault. But the person who gets the complaints will still be me. The person who'll be insulted by the UUCP freaks will be me again (not that I really care). And guess who's going to receive complaints from so-called "systems programmers" that actually sound more like administrative directors, about the fact that if a given software product has to abide by a certain predefined set of rules in order to operate properly, then the aforesaid software should provide facilities to automatically enforce the aforementioned rules inasmuch as is technically and humanly feasible within the limits of reasonable system resource consumption, blah blah, 21th century software ergonomy and expert systems blah human errors blah blah... Eric