At 10:43 17.12.99 -0700, David Samuelsen wrote: ------------------------- > Stefan, > > No one can shove the listowner aside and steal the list. Dear David, I frankly don't understand why you react so "irritated". I have no intention at all to "steal the list". Once some reasonable draft is compiled I wanted politely ask you whether you would think that a link to it would fit into the "welcome message" to new subscribers and whether the keeper of the FAQ may post it monthly to the list. After that I had been "in the background" like until now. I, and I assume most here in the list would appreciate it, if you yourself have the time etc. to keep such a FAQ (i.e. compile and update it). I know it from other lists that somebody can come up with a proposal for something what might be good for the list. The list owner may give his comments, or even volunteer to take over the new work, or somebody else does it. I know e.g. one list, where one of the _members_ monitors all the postings for interesting URLs and then once a month sends a table with all the URLs that were posted during the last month to the mailing list, so that everybody has them neatly together. A great service to this list. The listowner doesn't need to do everything there. Nevertheless he/she has the important task to take care that the new ideas fit to the overall issue of the list. He steers, but doesn't rule the list. > > This list is fast approaching 5 years old mark. Never a dictated list. > > Information and queries over the years posted on this list had NEVER > been constant. That's why a FAQ shouldn't be a static document, somewhere firmly placed on a WebPage, but a permanent "working draft" what is constantly updated, with the current version somewhere on the web (rootsweb?) for easy accessibility. > > If you want to know exact where is where, what is what, who is who, > how is how pertaining to Bavaria - just go to > http://www.rootsweb.com/~deubay/ I know Julia Krapfl's site. It is nice with good info. Not as complete like others, but I am in no position to judge it. However: it is from the whole design a WebPage. I was thinking about a TEXT document, what can be mailed. Two main reasons: 1. Not everybody has always easy access the the web. 2. A document what is mailed regularly to the list will get more contributions from the list members and therefore be more updated, than a page that only resides somewhere in the web. > No more discussion of the FAQs and flames are NOT tolerated on the > list. > > W. David Samuelsen, listowner Several members of the list thought that such a FAQ would be a good idea. Why do you want to stop it? I had a second thought about the "boring questions" that I complained about yesterday - also based on Mary Rogers's nice posting: One of the features of this list is, that the "automatic answers" don't go back to the whole list, but only to the sender. By this the list doesn't see most of the replies that a posting gets. What I see is: There is a question, where I know how to find the answer, but don't have always the time. And if the asker would have a "FAQ", he/she could find it also by him/herself. To the list it looks like the question wouldn't be answered for a while, or not at all. And this makes me feel not so good. What I don't see is, that the asker actually got several answers. And what I probably also forgot is, that in genealogy lists there are many members who retired already and have therefore plenty of time and who like to send mails. "Efficiency" is rather unimportant to them. So, I'll take back my remark about the "boring questions", and will just try to ignore them without bad feelings. Somebody else will hopefully answer. If they don't receive any, then they please should write a second time. Sounds sarcastic, but isn't meant this way. Really. Ah, and finally: Flaming. In Bavaria we were used to get rather quickly into a heated debate. But as quickly as we got into it, as quickly everything was forgotten again and we were good friends. I don't consider this here as serious flaming. And I have no problems with a nice score board, or being on a ship list ;-)) Have a nice weekend, everybody! Stefan