What is a Listserv?

Listserv refers both to a mailing service for discussion groups/electronic conferences and the discussion groups (or lists) themselves. There are more than 6,500 Listserv discussion groups covering all subjects. Listserv discussion groups differ from Usenet newsgroups in two ways; Listservs tend to be more academic in scope and messages are distributed differently--you must formally subscribe to a Listserv, messages are then sent directly to your e-mail account where you can read, delete or save them. An active discussion list can result in numerous messages everyday so be sure to check your e-mail account regularly, delete unwanted messages and use proper netiquette in those lists you subscribe to.

Listserv commands

Here is a discription of the most common commands used with listserv lists.

subscribe PLANT-TC FirstName LastName
This command will subscribe the address taken from the ``From'' line to the Plant Tissue Culture list PLANT-TC. For example, the following session would subscribe you to the PLANT-TC mailing list under the name of Mark W. Galatowitsch:
Start an e-mail session
Begin composing a new e-mail message
IMPORTANT!! LEAVE THE SUBJECT LINE BLANK
AND DON'T APPEND SIGNATURES TO THE END OF YOUR MESSAGE
```
        To:   LISTSERV@LISTS.UMN.EDU
        Cc:
        Attchment:
        Subject:
        ------Message Text----------
        subscribe PLANT-TC Mark W. Galatowitsch
```
When you subscribe you will get a standard welcome message, including instructions on how to use the list.
Administrative commands like subscribe should be mailed to the E-mail address of the mailing list manager (LISTSERV), NOT to the E-mail address of the list. This is one of the most frequent errors with mailing lists. Listserv is smart enough to catch some administrative commands sent to a mailing list, other mailing list managers do not have this feature.
If you want to subscribe to mailing list PLANT-TC@LISTS.UMN.EDU, then mail the subscribe command to LISTSERV@LISTS.UMN.EDU, NOT to PLANT-TC@LISTS.UMN.EDU. Messages you send to PLANT-TC@LISTS.UMN.EDU are sent to EVERYONE who is subscribed to the PLANT-TC@LISTS.UMN.EDU listserv.
unsubscribe PLANT-TC
The address of the ``From'' line will be removed from the mailing list. Signoff is an often used synonym for unsubscribe. For example, the following session instructs the LISTSERV to unsubscrbe the user from the PLANT-TC list:
Start an e-mail session
Begin composing a new e-mail message
IMPORTANT!! LEAVE THE SUBJECT LINE BLANK
AND DON'T APPEND SIGNATURES TO THE END OF YOUR MESSAGE
```
        To:   LISTSERV@LISTS.UMN.EDU
        Cc:
        Attchment:
        Subject:
        ------Message Text----------
        unsubscribe PLANT-TC
```
One common problem occurs when your E-mail address has changed; then you can not unsubscribe. If this happens you can contact the list owner Mark Galatowitsch (galat002@tc.umn.edu).
review PLANT-TC
Use this command to receive a subscription listing of a mailing list. It will be sent to you as a file called PLANT-TC LIST. A mailing list is comprised of two parts: a control section and a subscription section. The control section holds the definition parameters for a list which includes information such as who is authorized to review or join a list and whether or not it is archived.
```
PLANT-TC LIST Control Section (Header)

*
*  Plant Tissue Culture
*
*  Review= Private   Subscription= Open         Send= Private
*  Notify= Yes       Reply-to= List,Respect      Files= Yes
*  Validate= No
*  X-Tags= Comment   Stats= Normal,Private       Ack= No
*  Confidential= No
*  Notebook= Yes,/var/listserv/archives/plant-tc,Monthly,Service
*  Notebook-Header= Short
*  Default-Options= Repro
*  Errors-To= Owners
*
*  Owner= galat002@tc.umn.edu               (Mark W. Galatowitsch)
*
*  Notebooks available.
*
```
The subscription section holds the e-mail addresses and names of all non-concealed list members. The REView command allows you to receive a listing of either or both of these sections (the default is both) for any list, provided you are authorized to do so. For security reasons, individual list members can restrict the appearance of their e-mail address and name in response to a REView command if they have set the CONCEAL mailing list option (see the SET command below for more details).
To understand all the control section definition parameters, read the listkeyw memo file you can get from listserv by sending the get listkeyw memo command to LISTSERV@LISTS.UMN.EDU.
REVIEW PLANT-TC BY sort-fields
The BY option is used to specify a presentation format for the members of a list you are reviewing. The sort-fields parameter indicates the way in which you want the list members to be sorted. If the BY option is not given in a REView command, the list members will be sorted by the computer node name given in their e-mail addresses. This is equivalent to using the the NODEid parameter with the BY option (see below). The sort-fields can be:

Country
Sort list members by the country of origin given in their e-mail addresses.
Name
Sort list members by their names (last, then first). Note that this is not the e-mail address but the full name that they provided when they subscribed to a list.
NODEid
Sort list members by their computer node. That is, the name that comes after the '@' (at sign) in their e-mail addresses.
Userid
Sort list members by their userids. That is, the name that comes before the '@' (at sign) in their e-mail addresses.

For example, if you wished to have the membership of a mailing list presented to you sorted by their userids:
```
REVIEW PLANT-TC BY USERID
```
Note that more than one sort field may be specified when using the BY option. If this is the case, then the sort fields given must be enclosed in parentheses and the optional parenthesis that separates the list-name from the options of the REView command must also be present (although this will not be obligatory in future releases of the LISTSERV server). The list members will then be sorted on all the given sort fields (in order from left to right). For example, if you wanted the list members to be sorted by their countries and then by their names, your REView command would have the following format:
```
REVIEW PLANT-TC BY (COUNTRY NAME)
```
set PLANT-TC option
where option can be:
- mail, nomail, digest or index.
  Mail is the default.
  Nomail means you do not wish to receive mails for a certain time (e.g. vacation periods).
  Digest is useful for active lists: instead of receiving each mail from the list separately, mails will be collected (e.g. daily) and sent only once as one big mail.
- conceal or noconceal.
  Conceal means that your subscription will be hidden from the review command.
  Noconceal is the default.
- repro or norepro.
  Repro means that the sender of a mail will also get a copy via the mailing list.
  Norepro is the default, and often people who send something to a mailing list think their mail was not sent because they did not get a copy themselves.
- shorthdr, ietfhdr, dualhdr or fullhdr.
  Shorthdr means that some headers from the original mail will be removed; only a predefined set of headers will be in the mail.
  One of the problems with shorthdr is that e.g. the MIME header fields are removed. In that case you can set plant-tc fullhdr, so that all the headers will be kept in the mail (this is the default).
  Ietfhdr is used for some SMTP exploders.
  With dualhdr, listserv will insert mail headers at the beginning of the mail body. This is useful for some PC mail programs that strip the header from the message. Without the header information you may not know the e-mail address of the person who sent the original message to the list.
get file
Listserv can also work as file server. The most retrieved files are the logs of a mailing list: a mailing list can be logged, which means that all contributions to a list for a certain period (mostly monthly) are kept in one file. E.g. to retrieve the 1996 September log from PLANT-TC you can mail the command get plant-tc log9609 to LISTSERV@LISTS.UMN.EDU
index plant-tc will show the files coupled with plant-tc. The listserv computer only maintains the monthly logs for the previous 12 months. To see the complete listing of monthly logs dating back to November 1994 look at the web site: http://plant-tc.coafes.umn.edu/listserv/ptcmm.htm

search (The listserv Database search function is currently not available for PLANT-TC)
You can SEARCH the Plant-tc Listserv Archive November, 1994 - Present at:

http://plant-tc.coafes.umn.edu/listserv/ptcsearch.htm

help There are more commands available, the help command will show you a summary of these other commands. For the complete list of listserv commands refer to the following on-line documentation files available from LISTSERV@LISTS.UMN.EDU.
get listserv memo
get listserv refcard

Send additional questions to Plant-tc Listserv Page Coordinator: Mark W. Galatowitsch galat002@tc.unm.edu

Page last updated: Fri, October 5, 2001

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What is a Listserv?

Listserv commands

You can SEARCH the Plant-tc Listserv Archive November, 1994 - Present at: