On Sun, 15 Feb 1998 12:45:45 -0500 Don Wiss <[log in to unmask]> said: >But a calendar day only for those in the same time zone. Most LISTSERV setups are funded by local lists, especially in academia. That is, people get the money by saying that all these local administrative lists have to be run to save money, and then they may also run other lists on the side ;-) The local lists are usually for people in the same campus as the server and this is why the default digest time is midnight. Another consideration is that most countries lie entirely in one time zone, and in these countries people are not used to time zones at all (although they do know of the concept) and will want things to work "as expected", ie midnight to midnight. It would make absolutely no sense to a German to have digests start at another time because "it is then midnight in Singapore and this is as good a reference time zone as any". >Midnight on the US East Coast is peak usage time on the West. Maybe for dial-up access, but not for mailing lists. Most mailing list usage is still from business premises with a huge decline during the weekend (whereas there are lists where usage increases during the evenings and weekend). Midnight EST is one of the lowest usage periods worldwide as it is still too early (6am) for Europe to see much activity at all whereas even in the West Coast most people are out of the office. But this is not why this cut-off time was chosen, it is just to make it a calendar day in the server's own time zone. Eric