Hi folks, Whilst it may seem at first sight to be a good idea to post your Great Grandparents names on the list, experience shows that in practice this is *not* a good idea and there are better ways of going about it. Why is it not a good idea? Well, first of all it means that a lot of the subscribers to the list are going to post to the list. Now, I don't know how many subscribers Kevin has on this list, but lets say it's 600 and that 66% of them post their messages. This means that each and every one of us is going to receive and extra 400 messages in around about a week - I don't know about you, but I really don't wish to recieve that many emails. If you want to see the effect on a list, have a look in the West Riding List archives (look for "Great Grandparents") or you could have a look in the Yorksgen archives and see the madness caused on the list by the posting of "My birthday is xx of xxxxxx", along with various other subjects. Another reason why it's not a good idea is that people only get a "fleeting glance" of the names at the time they are posted, and then they are gone. OK, I know that they go into the archives, but how many people know that they are archived, let alone how to access the archives? Not very many judging by the number of people who don't know how to unsubscribe which is far easier. What is the objective of posting the names? Well, it is a fact that you could be very lucky and another lister will make a connection with one of your names, but because of the fleeting nature of the list, the person making the connection needs to be a member of the list at the time of posting, so the odds are stacked against this although not impossible. Of course you should have posted these names when you subscribed to the list or shortly after, and then updated them periodically - say once every three months or more. So, what are the alternatives? Well, the main one is to submit your names for inclusion on the YKS surnames interest list run by Magdalena and whose update postings you must have seen on this list. http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/YKSlist/ By posting your interests to this list you ensure that they are there for all to see *all* the time and also that they get included in the various search engines. There are of course other surnames interest lists for the various counties, and in some cases, single name lists. In conclusion may I ask people please *not* to post to the list as was requested? Of course all the above is only my opinion, but I hope I have explained it so that you can see it makes sense. Best wishes, Colin Hinson In the village of Blunham in Bedfordshire U.K. Maintainer of the Genuki Yorkshire pages: http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ Rare Books on CD: http://www.blunham.demon.co.uk/CDroms/ Baine's & Bulmers directories, History of Craven, Heywood/Northowram, National gazetteer of Great Britain & Ireland, Whelan's York & NRY Hunter's Hallamshire (Sheffield)