At 1:51 AM -0500 1/12/02, David W. Gulley is rumored to have typed:
This would supposedly serve two purposes: Let everyone know that there is a new list member Let the new member receive an email from the list
Yuck. So much for privacy in that first reason. In most cases, subscribers to mailing lists are lurkers, and prefer it that way. I would urge you to have the listowner rethink this plan; it seems to me to be a really _bad_ idea _requiring_ the subscriber to lose anonymity immediately upon subscribing, possibly against his/her will (unless you make it clear _before_ subscribing what the mailing list is going to do). It's one thing for the maintainer to post, "we've had a lot of subscribers lately, please introduce yourselves!" and an entirely DIFFERENT thing for the maintainer to post, "David W. Gulley has just joined the list - send him spam...er...email!"
(As to the second reason, well, that's just silly. You can easily use subscribe.files to send the new subscriber the last mail sent from the list; I use this on _all_ the digested lists I run and some of the interactive so a subscriber can get involved immediately upon subscribing.)
(So where do I get <FIRSTNAME> <LASTNAME>?)
You don't, obviously, unless you force the subscriber to use a web-based system (perl CGI, PHP, about a gadzillion other ways) that asks for additional, unnecessary, and invasive information. Like Yahoo! - hey, why not ask how much they make in a year's time, too? (Tongue in cheek, of course, but it _does_ point out that mailing lists _shouldn't_ need anything other than an email address. More than that and this one starts to question the motives of the list owners.)
Ah, well, either way this isn't a SmartList question, but one either suited to list-managers or a CGI development list.
Charlie