Good afternoon all, I am sending this message to all the Australian and New Zealand mailing lists that I subscribe to, and hope that you will forgive me for doing so, but there is no other way that I can get this message to everyone. Webring, the people who hosted the backbone of so many webrings for the past 6 or 7 years, has been taken over by YAHOO! As a result, it is now absolutely impossible for the ringmasters of the rings hosted by Webring to access their rings to undertake maintenance, add people to the ring, delete inactive sites and so on. Personally, I find this inconvenient - we were given no warning, just an email telling us that the take over had happened. Yahoo! now require all ringmasters to have a Yahoo! ID and that you need to associate your webring with that ID - that much works - but after that, forget it - there is nowhere, anymore, to maintain the ring! And on top of that each of you, the members of ANY WEBRING ANYWHERE, not just this one, will have to have YAHOO! ID's and will need to associate YOUR OWN pages with EACH of the rings you are a member of - What a PAIN IN THE PROVERBIAL that is!! Yahoo! advertise great new webring managment tools etc. - but despite several hours of trying to find the things (excuse the language here, but I am fairly peeved about this) I am buggered if I can find them! After spending time that could have been productively spent elsewhere, but instead was wasted, I have decided that it is just not worth the trouble to continue to maintain - or at least try to maintain the Gum Tree Web Ring any longer. I will leave it live on line where it is for 1 month from today, after that I am pulling it down in disgust - and yes, in protest at the arrogant attitude of the YAHOO! managament who give no assistance what so ever in finding their so-called "great tools" - despite 9 separate emails to their help people begging for assistance. I would like to thank all of those people who have patronised Gum Tree during its 2½ year life time, and especially those who have helped out. My apologies if this causes inconvenience to anyone, but it is out of my control, and is just another example of big business not giving a hoot who they walk on to make a dollar. I am sorry if this inconveniences anyone, but it is beyond my control. I could leave it there, and probably will, but there will be no maintenance done on the ring, so new members won't get added, because it is impossible for me to do so. Julie Stokes almost former ringmaster Gum Tree Genealogy Ring