Bettie, I belong to another list in which the gateway is active. A gateway is nothing more than way of porting items from one format into another, as I understand it. Once activated the mechanics of the process are transparent to the user. In our case the activation or deactivation of the GenConnect gateway is controlled by the list manager. It is either on or it is not. What happens is, when anyone posts a message to the Genconnect board or a response to a message on that board that affects your county of interest, that message and the link back URL (universal resource locator or web address) appears in a "normal" posting on say the GAWALTON-L list. If you are interested, you may explore the message and any associated threads leading to or from it.. If not delete it as you would any other message and go on about your business. It really makes one more aware of the GenConnect message board postings and the service makes it less likely that you will miss something. You could do the same thing by just checking the message boards personally every now and again. But this way, if you follow a list with the gateway active, you pretty much stay on top of both lists as you go. The disadvantages are slight. The only one I can see is that you get a few more messages. But when you think about it, messages and communication are what you joined a list for in the first place. For people who are overwhelmed with messages already, the slight addition to the number could be easily handled by converting to the digest mode e.g., GAWALTON-D where you receive the messages in a "packet" rather than continuously as posted. I like it. Walter Freeman Bettie Wood wrote: > ...Also, there's a "new deal" out by Rootsweb (do they ever sleep???) It's > called "GenConnect Gateway". If ya'll like I can turn it on... What > this does, is take any posting that's made from the GenConnect boards, & > send it to the GAWALTON list...