Today there were a couple of technical questions posted to the MT
Forum, essentially as follows:

1.   How can I get a list of fellow subscribers' names and e-mail
     addresses?

2.   How can I find out if something has already been discussed on
     the Forum?

As these are questions that I'm sure a lot of people have, I've
prepared this brief survival guide for TWAIN-L.  You might want to
print a copy or keep it on disk so you can refer to it if
necessary.

Both of the tasks above can be performed quickly and easily by
anyone at any time of the day or night, simply by sending various
commands to the e-mail address [log in to unmask] (or
[log in to unmask]).  This address is hereafter abbreviated as
"LISTSERV".  The commands you send may be either in the form of
interactive messages (if you're on a system like BITNET that
supports this) or as e-mail messages containing a single-line,
i.e., your command to LISTSERV.

NB:  It is important to bear in mind the different uses for the
     LISTSERV address vs. the TWAIN-L address.  All messages sent
     to TWAIN-L are automatically redistributed to the subscribers,
     so please be careful not to send a command like "INDEX
     TWAIN-L" to the address TWAIN-L, since your message will be
     sent to everyone, and you won't have achieved what you wanted.
     Commands must be sent to LISTSERV, an account which
     automatically parses the messages it receives; LISTSERV is a
     computer, not a human, so you shouldn't sign your messages to
     LISTSERV with your name, or "thank you", etc., as the computer
     won't understand your message.

     This warning is not to discourage you from interacting with
     LISTSERV, but only to encourage you to be courteous to other
     subscribers, who might not enjoy getting a message that says
     only "INDEX TWAIN-L".  However, you don't have to worry about
     making a serious mistake.  If you make an error while sending
     a command to LISTSERV, e.g., you make a typo, LISTSERV will
     simply let you know that it doesn't understand your command.
     Nothing worse than that will happen, so don't be afraid to
     send commands to LISTSERV.

Selected commands
-----------------
TO GET A LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS: Send the command "REVIEW TWAIN-L".
(Just send the text, not the quotation marks.)  This will return a
list of subscribers, sorted alphabetically by e-mail address.
Alternatively, you may send the slightly longer command "REVIEW
TWAIN-L (COUNTRIES".  (Note that you don't use a closing
parenthesis after "COUNTRIES".)  This returns the same list of
subscribers, but at the end will be appended a breakdown of
subscribers by country.  You may be interested to know, for
example, that the Forum presently has over sixty subscribers spread
over four countries.  Most are in the U.S., of course.

TO CONCEAL YOUR NAME FROM THE OTHER SUBSCRIBERS: If you don't want
to have your name and e-mail address shown to people who issue the
above command, you can customize your subscription to do this.
Just send the command "SET TWAIN-L CONCEAL".

TO BROWSE OLD MESSAGES OF THE FORUM: Every message posted to
TWAIN-L is automatically stored in a log file on LISTSERV.  A new
notebook file begins every month.  To get an index of the files
available, send the command "INDEX TWAIN-L".  LISTSERV will send
you an index of the filenames and their start dates.  The filenames
take the form "TWAIN-L LOG9207", where "92" represents the year,
and "07" represents the month, i.e., July.  To retrieve this file,
you would issue the command "GET TWAIN-L LOG9207".  The file that
is sent contains all the messages that have been posted to the Forum
in July 1992.

TO STOP RECEIVING MESSAGES FROM THE FORUM: There are two commands
that will achieve this.  One is "SIGNOFF TWAIN-L", which will
remove your name from the mailing list.  However, suppose you're
only going away for the summer, and you don't want your unattended
e-mail account to fill up with messages--but you still want your
name to appear in the list of subscribers.  The best command in
this case is "SET TWAIN-L NOMAIL".  This will tell TWAIN-L to stop
sending you Forum postings, but your name will still appear as a
subscriber when someone issues the "REVIEW TWAIN-L" command
(discussed above).  This alternative has the advantage that your
Twainian colleagues will still be able to locate your e-mail
address if they want to write to you, and--if you're a member of
the Mark Twain Circle of America--your listing on TWAIN-L will
ensure that your e-mail address also appears in the periodic
directory of members that James Leonard publishes in the _Mark
Twain Circular_.  To resume receiving mail from the Forum, send the
command "SET TWAIN-L MAIL".

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT LISTSERV COMMANDS: If you're intrigued
by the above commands and want to learn others, just send the
command "INFO GENINTRO", and you will be sent a more detailed
introduction guide.  This guide will refer you to other
documentation files available from LISTSERV, from which you can
learn other useful things, e.g., how to do keyword-searching in the
TWAIN-L log files.

The features outlined above should suggest that if you're only
reading the daily messages from the Mark Twain Forum, you're not
taking full advantage of the resources that are available.  For
many people, the ability to locate colleagues' e-mail addresses and
to search previous postings for topics of interest is at least as
valuable (if not more so) as the Forum's day-to-day mail.

If you have questions about the Forum, or if any of the above is
cryptic, just send me a message and I'll be happy to help as best
I can.  In the meantime, I hope you continue to enjoy the Forum as
much as I'm enjoying running it.  Several of you have thanked me
for setting up TWAIN-L, but I must admit that my motivation for doing
so was entirely selfish, as I knew that having access to the many
areas of expertise of the TWAIN-L subscribers would ensure that I
continue to learn about Samuel Clemens and his writings.

Taylor Roberts