What Pat describes (posting obits etc) is always welcomed -- people send information of all sorts to lists as long as it meets our rules (copyright and length of message). This Cork list is probably the largest county list for Ireland.... mostly because there are a lot of people who only have "Cork" as a place of origin in Ireland, when many times that is where they got on the boat, not where they were from (I have that even in my own line, thankfully I knew where they were really from). We usually have between 900 and 1000 members. Many people "lurk" or just watch the lists in order to learn, and that's a good thing to do, you learn by seeing what others are doing. People are always welcome to send in their surnames and locations of interest to any list, the only thing we ask is that you not put "Roll Call" in the subject line. Rootsweb frowns on that (although some lists do it, I know) because it doesn't tell the reader what the message is about (so many people don't even read the message) and it messes up the archives with all those Roll Calls in the subject line. As an alternative, that is why I have a surname page on the Cork IGW site which I also run. There are many names there, and you can submit yours anytime (I'm a bit behind right now due to workload but they get put up). The Cork page is at http://community.webtv.net/shamrockroots/corkigw There you will find info about the mailing list as well as donated material to the site. That is another thing you can do if you have material (again, if it meets copyright standards), you can contact whomever runs the county site and ask if they will put it up for you. This kind of information shows up on search engines, where mailing list messages do not. You should also realize there are many "specialty" mailing lists, ones where people send in obits from their local papers every day, ones for Irish who settled in a certain area... and on and on. Not all these lists are on the Rootsweb server, so the -best- place to look is on John Fuller's site, http://www.rootsweb.com/~jfuller/gen_mail.html Finally, at this time of year, all lists are slow. People are busy with holidays, and in Australia (where we have many members, about 1/3) it's summer time. Then in January, when Santa brings all those shiny new computers, we get lots of "newbies" who are just starting. I hope this explained things about lists to everyone. I'm always available for questions, but yes, I'm a stickler for sticking to the rules of the list. There is no way to run a very large list without them. If you're not happy on one list, go to John Fuller's site and try another, usually there are more than one list for large areas. Let's not debate this on the list..... if you have any other questions or comments please send them to me privately. Again, anyone is always welcome to send info and their data to any list. Maura Listowner CountyCork <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Maura Petzolt mpetzolt2@webtv.net <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> SHAMROCK ROOTS homepage http://community.webtv.net/shamrockroots/SHAMROCKROOTS Helpful Hints for Successful Searching http://community.webtv.net/mpetzolt2/helpfulhints