Date:         Mon, 23 Feb 1998 12:51:53 EST
From: "Fable, Thy name is Legion" <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Subject:      [WRITERS] FILL: Would the Real WRITERS list please stand up?

I think I may owe some of you an apology.

Recently someone was berating me about the poor service I was
providing, and noted that they expected better when they paid for
it...they threatened to report me to AOL customer service!

I pointed out that I was a volunteer, with no connection to AOL.  In
the ensuing discussion, we discovered that they thought they had
subscribed to WRITERS-CLUB -- which is something AOL runs.  That day,
I bopped over to the aol web site and discovered that (lo and behold)
someone else was running a writers list!

I can't find it today (don't you just love finding something on the
web, and trying to find it again a few days later only to discover
that it seems to have slipped into a wrinkle in space?) but I think
the directions for joining were something like:

Send listserv@listserv.aol.com a message with the text

subscribe writers-club firstname lastname

I had noticed that we have a few people who seem to share the same
first name (club?) but thought this was probably an oddity of whatever
collection of lists they discovered our fine list in.

Apparently some people have been trying to join a list called
Writers-club and (due to the contrariness of the computer, no doubt)
have instead been joining Writers.

I guess the morale of the story is...welcome to what you've found,
even if it isn't exactly what you expected.  If you want to leave,
we'll understand (send LISTSERV@mitvma.mit.edu a message with the text

SIGNOFF WRITERS

and be a little patient--there are some lags in the networks which may
result in you getting list mail even after you have been removed from
the list membership).

And if you want to stick around and participate, good on you!

(huh...getting paid to run a writers list...nah, not worth it...)

tink

[hum...tracked down some old links, over and through the...aha!
http://www.writersclub.com...they've moved, and they are going
commercial!  oh, well...]