                                    LISTSERVS
   
Remember, though, that today's lesson only covers LISTSERV lists. In fact, this 
lesson is an elementary lesson for ordinary LISTSERV users like you and me. 
Tomorrow's lesson will be a highly technical lesson for LISTSERV (and other 
mailing list servers) gurus-to-be. 
What is a LISTSERV mailing list? Quite simply, it is a list maintained by a 
LISTSERV program of a whole bunch of people who share similar interests. Anyone 
can subscribe to a list by sending a SUBSCRIBE command (remember those?) to the 
LISTSERV address. Any e-mail letter sent to the list's address is copied and 
mass-mailed to the e-mail box of every person subscribed to the list. Everyone 
else on the list can then reply to that letter, and then ... well, you get the 
picture. 
LISTSERV lists give you a way to have open discussions with dozens (or even 
hundreds) of people on a myriad of topics. Best of all, it is all done through 
e-mail! 
I want to say something about the difference between list addresses and LISTSERV 
addresses. Let's pretend that I create a list here at the University of Alabama 
for the open discussion of power line-chomping squirrels. I'll even call the 
list "SQUIRREL". 
The address for our pretend squirrel discussion list would be 
SQUIRREL@UA1VM.UA.EDU (or SQUIRREL@UA1VM.BITNET). Any e-mail letter sent to the 
SQUIRREL@UA1VM.UA.EDU address would be copied and mass-mailed to every single 
person subscribed to the squirrel list. That's simple enough. 
But how are people going to subscribe to my squirrel list? We need a second 
address just to handle all of the commands for the list! That second address is 
the LISTSERV address (which, in this case, is LISTSERV@UA1VM.UA.EDU). 
Are you starting to see the picture? 
The list address is the address you send something to if you want it to be 
distributed to everyone else subscribed to the list. The LISTSERV address is the 
address you send all of your commands to. 
What would happen if you sent a command (like SUBSCRIBE or GET) to the 
discussion list's address instead of to the LISTSERV's address? Simple -- your 
command would be treated like a letter and would be sent to everyone on the list 
(how embarrassing!). 
Remember this (and you will see this on a pop quiz sometime): 
    Send your LETTERS to the list address! 
    Send your COMMANDS to the LISTSERV address! 
Now, life would be a whole bunch easier if the only LISTSERV in the world was at 
the University of Alabama. But, it isn't. There are thousands of different 
LISTSERVs around the world, and there are literally tens of thousands of 
different LISTSERV lists. 
How are you ever going to find out what different discussion lists are out 
there, and what these lists' addresses are? Well, there are a couple of ways to 
do this: 
    Word of mouth -- someone tells you about a hot new list you need to check 
    out. 
    Internet Yellow Pages -- there are some GREAT books you can buy in most 
    bookstores that tell you where all of the neat stuff is on the Internet (as 
    a matter of fact, Osborne/McGraw-Hill has given me permission to quote from 
    their "Internet Yellow Pages" later on in this workshop!!). 
    The LIST GLOBAL or LIST GLOBAL / STRING command -- we'll talk about this 
    tomorrow. 
    Announcements on other lists. 
How are you ever going to figure out which LISTSERV address goes with which 
discussion list? EASY! This trick only works with LISTSERV discussion lists, but 
if you take the full address of a discussion list (like SQUIRREL@UA1VM.UA.EDU) 
and replace the discussion list's name with the word "LISTSERV", you'll end up 
with the correct LISTSERV address for that particular list (in this case, the 
correct LISTSERV address for the squirrel list would be LISTSERV@UA1VM.UA.EDU). 
A few more examples: 
     List address:              LISTSERV address:

     CHAUCER@UICVM.BITNET       LISTSERV@UICVM.BITNET
     ROADMAP@UA1VM.UA.EDU       LISTSERV@UA1VM.UA.EDU
     PPD-L@HUMBER.BITNET        LISTSERV@HUMBER.BITNET
     VEGLIFE@VTVM1.BITNET       LISTSERV@VTVM1.BITNET
Why is this important to know? Well, let's say that I tell you that there is a 
LISTSERV list called VEGLIFE@VTVM1.BITNET that you really need to subscribe to. 
All I have given you is the list's address. Remember, you can only send LETTERS 
to the list address You need the LISTSERV address in order to subscribe! 
With this trick, you automatically know that the LISTSERV address for 
VEGLIFE@VTVM1.BITNET is LISTSERV@VTVM1.BITNET and you can subscribe to the list 
without any problem! 
You may notice that some list addresses look something like this: CRUISE-L@UNLVM 
MAPTEST@UA1VM NAVIGATE@UBVM Those are BITNET addresses. To turn these addresses 
into something that you can use, you'll have to add .BITNET to the end of the 
addresses: CRUISE-L@UNLVM.BITNET MAPTEST@UA1VM.BITNET NAVIGATE@UBVM.BITNET and 
the LISTSERV addresses would be: LISTSERV@UNLVM.BITNET LISTSERV@UA1VM.UA.EDU 
LISTSERV@UBVM.BITNET One nice thing about this is that you can almost always 
tell that a list is a LISTSERV list by looking at the list's address. If the 
address is LIST@NODE or LIST@NODE.BITNET, you can all but bet that the list is a 
LISTSERV list. 
Some of you may be at sites that do not allow mail to Bitnet addresses. You can 
bypass this restriction by taking the address

LIST@NODE.BITNET

dropping the .BITNET, so the address becomes

LIST@NODE

changing the @ to a %, so the address becomes

LIST%NODE

and then adding @CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU to the end, so that the final address becomes

LIST%NODE@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU

Now let's talk about some new LISTSERV commands. You already know the SUBSCRIBE 
command

SUBSCRIBE listname 

and the GET command

GET filename filetype F=MAIL

I want to show you a couple of other commands that will make your life a whole 
lot easier (remember, all commands must be sent to a LISTSERV address). 
If you ever need to unsubscribe from a list, the UNSUBSCRIBE command will take 
care of everything. There are three different UNSUBSCRIBE commands that you can 
use: 
    UNSUBSCRIBE listname 
    to unsubscribe from a particular list (you need to replace the word 
    "listname" with the name of a the list you are dropping) 
    UNSUBSCRIBE * 
    to unsubscribe from every list at a particular Listserv address 
    UNSUBSCRIBE GLOBAL 
    To unsubscribe from every LISTSERV list on the planet 
Have you ever accidentally thrown away an e-mail letter? Well, if that letter 
was from a LISTSERV list and if that list keeps an archive, you can retrieve 
that letter from the LISTSERV! Here is how to do it: 
    Send an INDEX listname F=MAIL command to the LISTSERV address (for example, 
    to get the index for the squirrel list, your command would say INDEX 
    SQUIRREL F=MAIL). 
    Look through the index to find the file or notebook that you want to 
    retrieve (the index will even tell you the filename and filetypes for each 
    of the files!!). 
    Use the GET filename filetype F=MAIL command to get the file or notebook 
    that you want. 
Remember: you send LETTERS to the list address; you send COMMANDS to the 
LISTSERV address. Etch this into your brain :) 
There are a couple more things I want to talk about, but I'll save them until 
tomorrow :) 
REVIEW:
    LISTSERV lists are (usually) discussion lists that are (usually) open to any 
    who wants to subscribe 
    You subscribe to a LISTSERV list using the SUBSCRIBE LISTNAME command 
    Letters are sent to the list address, commands to the LISTSERV address. 
    You find new lists through word of mouth, Internet Yellow Pages (and other 
    books), the LIST GLOBAL and LIST GLOBAL / STRING command, and announcements 
    on other lists. 
    The LISTSERV address can be found by replacing the listname in the address 
    with the word LISTSERV (listname@address ---> LISTSERV@address). This only 
    works with LISTSERV addresses, though. 
    You need to change addresses like list@node to list@node.bitnet before you 
    can use the address. 
    Bitnet addresses can be converted to Internet addresses by changing the 
    LIST@NODE.BITNET address to LIST%NODE@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU 
    To unsubscribe from a list, use the UNSUBSCRIBE, UNSUBSCRIBE *, or 
    UNSUBSCRIBE GLOBAL command (remember that all commands must be sent to the 
    LISTSERV address). 
    To receive a list of all of the files that you can get from a particular 
    LISTSERV list, use the INDEX LISTNAME command. You can then use the GET 
    FILENAME FILETYPE F=MAIL command to get the files that you want. 
    You send letters to the list address, commands to the LISTSERV address. 

 