In a message dated 7/20/2006 12:54:44 PM Eastern Standard Time, dhettrick@earthlink.net writes: I wish that it could be set up for several surname boards to gateway to one mailing list. I have half a dozen surname situations where there are informal agreements to funnel all activity to one list, but it is not as efficient as having the actual gateway. The last time I brought this up, I got several lectures about how names may look the same but be very different, blah blah blah. Those of us who are researching know that Hetrick and Hettrick are the same name. I wouldn't agree to gateway Hedrick and Hedderish to the same list but it is just silly to have two mailing lists with 5 subscribers each when there are so few of us in the US researching the name. I own boards and lists for McCartan, McCarten, McCartin, McCarton. I assure you that they are the same name. Board people and list people have different working styles, so I'm fine with 4 boards - and for an obscure surname, they have a respectable amount of activity. I concentrate all the list activity on McCartan, and all the list people are fine with that. I'd love to gateway all 4 boards to the one list. As it is, I have to have 4 lists to stay on top of the boards (I am a list person). Diane Het(t)rick dhettrick@earthlink.net I know you probably don't want to hear it again--but names can mean one thing and have one origin for one person or a group of like-minded researchers who are related but that is often not the case when you open up the subject of name spellings for everyone. You can learn that what you thought wa simple and cut and dried isn't for those whose names were never spelled differently than the spelling they are familiar with. There are many ways to handle surname variants and RootsWeb has made its choice (and rightly so I believe) to allow any and all name spellings that someone requests a list and/or board for. So once that decision was made then it became impossible to allow gatewaying between dissimilar variant spellings because there is no way to guarantee that in the future someone wouldn't come along and request the exact spelling list and then want to open the gateway. If it was already gatewayed to a variant list--then it wouldn't be possible because one board can only be gatewayed to ONE list. Joan