unsubscribe me pPLEEEEZE.........

[Joe Wells]

In article <504 at escom.com> al at escom.com (Al Donaldson) writes:

   In article <21732 at adm.BRL.MIL>, grant at panhed writes:
   > Nothinmg seems to work!!
   > UNSUB GRANT UNIX-WIZ

   That's funny, I tried "UNSUB GRANT CHEEZ-WHIZ" and it worked GREAT!
   Maybe you were in the wrong group.. 

   Seriously, can't the mailing list folks do something about not echoing 
   these subscription/unsubscription requests back to Usenet?
   Maybe education, nah...

The problem appears to be the result of confusion between BITNET and
Internet mailing lists.  Most BITNET mailing lists are managed by a
program called listserv (bitserv?) that is reachable by the address
listserv at machine.  To subscribe/unsubscribe, you send mail to
listserv at machine.  To send mail to the list, you send mail to
list-name at machine instead.

Internet mailing lists are usually maintained by humans.  To subscribe/
unsubscribe to a list, you send mail to list-name-request at machine.  To
send mail to the list, you send mail to list-name at machine.

It's actually sort of humorous.  On BITNET lists, you get a lot of "Please
unsubscribe me from this list" messages, while on Internet lists (and
gatewayed newsgroups), you get a lot of "UNSUB LIST-L Firstname Lastname"
messages.

Oh well, maybe someday everyone will figure it out ...

-- 
Joe Wells <jbw at bucsf.bu.edu>
jbw%bucsf.bu.edu at bu-it.bu.edu
...!harvard!bu-cs!bucsf!jbw