Mon, 17 Jul 2006 06:18:34

Your message to vanagon-request@GERRY.VANAGON.COM has been forwarded to the "list owners" (the people who manage the vanagon list). If you wanted to reach a human being, you used the correct procedure and you can ignore the remainder of this message. If you were trying to send a command for the computer to execute, please read on.

The vanagon list is managed by a ListServ server. ListServ commands should always be sent to the "ListServ" address, ie LISTSERV@GERRY.VANAGON.COM. ListServ never tries to process messages sent to the vanagon-request address; it simply forwards them to a human being, and acknowledges receipt with the present message.

The "listname-request" convention originated on the Internet a long time ago. At the time, lists were always managed manually, and this address was defined as an alias for the person(s) in charge of the mailing list. You would write to the "listname-request" address to ask for information about the list, ask to be added to the list, make suggestions about the contents and policy, etc. Because this address was always a human being, people knew and expected to be talking to a human being, not to a computer. Unfortunately, some recent list management packages screen incoming messages to the "listname-request" address and attempt to determine whether they are requests to join or leave the list. They look for words such as "subscribe", "add", "leave", "off", and so on. If they decide your message is a request to join or leave the list, they update the list automatically; otherwise, they forward the message to the list owners. Naturally, this means that if you write to the list owners about someone else's unsuccessful attempts to leave the list, you stand good chances of being automatically removed from the list, whereas the list owners will never receive your message. No one really benefits from this. There is no reliable mechanism to contact a human being for assistance, and you can never be sure whether your request will be interpreted as a command or as a message to the list owners. This is why ListServ uses two separate addresses, one for the people in charge of the list and one for the computer that runs it. This way you always know what will happen, especially if you are writing in a language other than English.

In any case, if your message was a ListServ command, you should now resend it to LISTSERV@GERRY.VANAGON.COM. The list owners know that you have received this message and may assume that you will resend the command on your own. You will find instructions for the most common administrative requests below.

+---------------------+ | TO LEAVE THE LIST | +---------------------+

Write to LISTSERV@GERRY.VANAGON.COM and, in the text of your message (not the subject line), write: SIGNOFF vanagon

+--------------------+ | TO JOIN THE LIST | +--------------------+

Write to LISTSERV@GERRY.VANAGON.COM and, in the text of your message (not the subject line), write: SUBSCRIBE vanagon

+------------------------+ | FOR MORE INFORMATION | +------------------------+

Write to LISTSERV@GERRY.VANAGON.COM and, in the text of your message (not the subject line), write: "HELP" or "INFO" (without the quotes). HELP will give you a short help message and INFO a list of the documents you can order.