I suppose you are running a
Pd version which doesn't have the [list] objects yet. Older Pd
versions still allowed you to create a [list] object, but it was non
functional. 
  

3. How can I found out all this list stuff? It's undocumented in my PD
version... I never heard of [list append] or [list prepend] before, they
seem to work but I can't pull up any help files on them.
    

You need to update your Pd. If you cannot do this globally, you should
at least install some version of Pd-0.39 for testing purposes. [list]
is exxxxxtremely conventient. After you've tasted its sewwt odour, you
don't want to go back to list-less Pd again.