Hi B-L Members - We've been operating as a "closed" list for just over a week and I thought I would report what I see happening from the "managers" viewpoint. I have received several reports from RootsWeb that they have blocked spam from our list but only a few more for the same time period than when we were "open". My understanding is that once the people that peddle e-mail addresses to the spammers, harvest a batch of addresses from mail lists or whatever, there isn't much that can be done about it except to report the spam if it is abusive. I get 1-2 spam hits a day at my mailbox but I am on many mail lists and haven't tried to analyze the headers on the spams to see which may have come via B-L. It has been much easier to just delete them. One suggestion that seems to be valid is not to respond to any of the requests to reply to the spam message if you want to be "removed from their mailing list"; just delete the message. If the level of spam that you are getting is bothersome, please report your experience to my personal e-mail and I will report to RootsWeb. One problem that may now be resolved is that subscribe requests for several new members were not processed and returned the message "not on the accept list" rather than "Added to the subscriber list" which is the usual response from RootsWeb. I suggested that these people subscribe again after asking Tim Pierce at RW to look into this and he may have resolved it since their addresses now appear on the subscriber list. A couple of new members had problems with messages to the List that were similarly not accepted. Three new members who joined us this weekend did not have any problems. Please let me know if anyone is experiencing difficulties with -request messages to RootsWeb or with postings to BLANCHARD-L. Be sure to check our web page and the databases that have been prepared for your use. New members should check the web page and the BLANCHARD-L Archives to find out what information has been collected on your lines. This will help you compose your queries to BLANCHARD-L. Fletch