First, did you send it to the program that manages the list, or to the list itself? You MUST send subscription messages to the address that begins "listserv@ . . ." or they will be treated as normal list mail and will be distributed, with no effect on subscription status. Listowners sometimes intercept subscription messages sent to the wrong address, but it is unwise to count on this. The listowner may be out of town, or else busy with other matters. The appropriate listserv address is given on the homepage of the list in question.

Second, did you have a signature block or other extraneous text along with the subscription message? Listserv is simply a computer program, and it tries to treat each line of any message sent to it as a command. With signature blocks, the results can be unpredictable.

Third, was your subscription message sent as normal e-mail to the Listserv program? Some mail packages send attachments or embedded text, and again this can confuse the Listserv program. Check your mail program for information about this.

First, remember that many academic lists have natural cycles and are very quiet around semester breaks. If you want to get a topic started, just write to the list address (not the server program in this case!) and start the ball rolling.

Second, it is possible that your account was set to "nomail" status, or that you were deleted from the list because your account generated error messages and bounced mail to the listowner.

For instance, if your mailbox is full your host system may bounce messages back to the listowner; for a list with a lot of traffic and three or four subscribers with bulging mailboxes, this could easily overwhelm the listowner with hundreds of bounced e-mails a day! To find the status of your subscription, send e-mail to the appropriate listserv with the following line by itself in the message:

                  query listname