Hello, LSTOWN-L. It was a pleasure to discover this list today, and to see that "our founder" Eric Thomas himself is listowner here. So, -- thanks to all, and especially to Eric, for creating this powerful and exciting tool. * I was motivated to join this list today particularly because of the sudden growth of my own list, [log in to unmask] (The Bridge Across Consciousness), which after more than a year of steady growth suddenly went up from about 10,000 message lines per month to over 23,000 in the first two weeks of June. We have been reorganizing our project, and in the interest of protecting quality, have just shifted over to the "Subscription= By_owner" option. And I have been writing up a fairly comprehensive "Introduction and User's Guide", which describes what we do, basic policies, our concept of style, etc. But I have a question. As I read the basic "INFO REFCARD" for listserv, it seems to suggest that subscribers can *choose* which _topics_ they wish to receive. Is this possible? If so, how does this work? What I would like to do is create an "official" list of topics, and then permit BRIDGE-L subscribers to choose which particular subjects from a wide array they wish to join. If this is possible, we might have a list of twenty topics, and subscribers who are interested in 5 of them could "sign off" for those that are not quite to their interest. If this is possible, this kind of "topic control" would effectively create series of linked "sub-lists", which might powerfully expand the potential of the listserv format. Our project is quite interdisciplinary, and compared to a "conference" format, the "linear symbol stream" of a mailing list can become quite a jumble. But if the message stream can be partitioned by topic, we could take our project up to a much higher level. * The INFO REFCARD I have reads as follows: Revised LISTSERV System Reference Library, release 1.7f ------------------------------------------------------- (c) Eric Thomas 1986,1987,1988,1989,1990,1991,1992,1993 ************************************************************ * * * LISTSERV command reference cards: * * * *-> LISTSERV REFCARD: General user commands * * LISTOWNR REFCARD: List and file management commands * * LISTMAST REFCARD: Commands for the LISTSERV maintainer * * * ************************************************************ . . . SET listname options Alter your subscription options: ACK/NOACK/MSGack -> Acknowledgements for postings CONCEAL/NOCONCEAL -> Hide yourself from REVIEW Files/NOFiles -> Toggle receipt of non-mail files from the list Mail/NOMail -> Toggle receipt of mail DIGests/INDex -> Ask for digests or message indexes rather than getting messages as they are posted REPro/NOREPro -> Copy of your own postings? TOPICS: ALL -> Select topics you are <+/->topicname subscribed to (add/remove one or replace entire list) It is this last TOPICS: option which interests me. Can a subscriber send a SET command to the listserver, saying something like SET BRIDGE-L TOPICS: + science of consciousness + topic of the week - interactive theology thus changing their status on three possible subjects? Is something like this even possible? Am I reading the REFCARD properly? What would be the exact format for these commands? * I have a stack of listserv manuals printed out here, and have read through the lstown-l log9406 file, but can't say that I have managed to figure this out. I am going to continue to work through the manuals, but a few clues would be very helpful. Thanks so very much! - Bruce Schuman [log in to unmask], Listowner, [log in to unmask]