At 01:12 06/09/98 EDT, ALLAGREEN@aol.com wrote: >Perhaps it would be possible to compromise. I think that what Bill, Kelvin >and others like me are asking is that listmembers take just a brief moment to >reread what they have written, and ask themselves one basic question. "I know >this is important to _______, but is it important to everybody on the Green-L >list?" "Will anyone else even know what I am talking about?" If the answer >is to these is "yes", then by all means, send it to us all. I was going to keep well away from this discussion, but having seen Allan's proposed "compromise" felt I had to write. As far as I can see, what he is proposing means that in his opinion, and that of a very few others, the only thing which should ever be posted to the list is a simple request for information. After all, any reply to the query cannot possibly be of interest to everybody on the list. If that were the case we would never even have heard of Allan, Kelvin, Bill et al. On the other hand we also wouldn't have discovered what a mine of information people such as Tom can be. >From a personal level, I know thatI will never get any useful information towards my family history from this list. My biggest problem is that EVERY ancestor I have so far been able to trace has been within one single county of England. Now, I am not a new researcher. I have been doing this for over 30 years, and some of my lines stretch back to the early 1500s. Accordingly, subscribing to a list which deals exclusively with the USA (whether by original intent or not doesn't matter) will not help my research. However, I have learned an awful lot simply by being subscribed. I am subscribed to other lists. The most useful for my genealogy is the county list where my ancestors resided. It positively requests that all replies get copied to the list unless they are clearly personal messages and nothing else. In this way I have been able to help other people, and they in turn have helped me, although by Kelvin's criteria we should never have been in correspondence in the first place. Now, can we get bck to the exchange of information which is what the list is about? Tim Green