Todd Vierling wrote:
> And LISTSERV has, as the Lsoft rep who chimed in noted, been delivering
> mailing lists for over 15 years - dating back to the glory days of BITNET.
> Majordomo doesn't even go half as far. LISTSERV implements a human at
> -request, and Majordomo a machine. Talk about botched RFCs, especially
> trying to standardize something already so contrasting in practice....
Um, isn't one REASON for a standard to try to select from among a number
of conflicting but prevalent practices one which is 'preferred'?
That some folks on this list don't care for the choice 'they' made sounds
just a bit like sour grapes here, especially given the strident tone on
this thread recently . (IMHO, when a thread resorts to calling each other
names, it is generally to the point where little further intelligent
discussion will occur unless an outbreak of common sense occurs or the LIst
Manager takes action. It periodically amuses me that even seasoned
list managers revert to that level of behavior from time to time, it must
be something inherent in the species. And, yes, I've done it on this
list, too.)
Regarding the plethora of list-'function' addresses being discussed here,
I have really mixed emotions about that as well, though for my piddling 9
lists I could certainly maintain the aliases file by hand. Could not,
however, a site automate a bunch of these functions into the local
delivery agent, rather than hard-code them into the aliases file?
Example: 'list'-on is a meta-address that routes the message to the 'on'
function for 'list'. This presumes a consistent directory naming convention
at the site, however, or perhaps a table-lookup function.
--
Mike Nolan
