Today I felt like I would go mad if I didn't program something, to change from my usual meeting/tape mounting/user support activity (they call it "systems programming consultant" :-) ). I wrote the SUPPORT database code I had mentioned some time ago. For now it is installed on LISTSERV@LEPICS, although it will probably not remain there forever. It's simply 10 times more convenient to use a local 3192 than a slow SNA session to CEARN. You access the database in R/O mode using the standard LDBASE or LSVTALK (BTW thanks Jose Maria for a very niece piece of software), database name SUPPORT. Just do a SELECT *, INDEX, select one of the entries, PRINT and you will understand how it works much better than I could explain it in 10 lines. To append/add entries, you use the LSVSUPP EXEC that is available from [log in to unmask] Just type "LSVSUPP" and answer the questions. Don't be afraid to create dummy test entries, they are easy to discard (by the postmaster only). BE SURE TO PUT THE WORD "TEST" IN THE ABSTRACT THOUGH. You can't append to an entry which is not "yours". This is to avoid your participating in a conversation from which you would not get any feedback. I am considering the implications of a SUBSCRIBE/SIGNOFF command, knowing that filelist pruners are likely to subscribe to anything they can get their hand on, just for fun. By the way PLEASE WRITE MEANINGFUL ABSTRACTS. I will discard any entry that shows up as "LISTSERV problem" or "Question" if I am in a normal (bad :-) ) mood, if I am in a particularly good mood I will rename the abstract. I have installed a few of the pending problem/suggestions from my UNREAD NOTEBOOK into the database. The main advantage of this technique is that you get feedback without my having to send individual replies (assuming I remember who reported the problem) or individual answers to your question. You can also find out what the current pending problems are (SELECT * IN SUPPORT WHERE STATUS='OPEN' AND TYPE='PROB'). It also lets me keep track of exactly what I have changed when, and I could write a program later to extract this information. Finally, it makes it much easier to distribute questions between several knowledgeable persons. If I am to leave EARN in the future, I would probably still have some kind of access to the network, although I wouldn't show up very often. Thus the people who do the maintenance on EARN could answer the "easy" problems and change the STATUS of the tricky ones to, for example, "OPEN (LEV2)" :-), and I would read these and append when I have time. It could also automatically forward the new appends to the regional coordinator, etc. Of course, I will not force people to address me through a database. This would be stupid. But I hope that the superior level of service they could get through this new system would incite them to use it whenever they want some feedback. The more entries we have, the more questions the users can find an answer to by themselves, the more 'DUP id1 OF id2' commands I can issue to point new questions back to existing ones, and the more time it saves me and Ross, Jose Maria, Harold, etc. Eric