Hello everyone, I had privately written to Jim Rowan, the Listowner here at HOWELL-L, last week asking him why he was posting attachments, tests, and an off-topic note (as sweet as the Mother's Day comments were, they WERE off-topic). For those of you who have been around Listserves any length of time, you know those are very much NO-NOs. Just isn't done, and ESPECIALLY is not done by the Listowner, who is supposed to be responsible to make sure the rules are not broken. As I said to him in my note, if he were going to continue to be the one to break the rules, I felt he should re-think serving as Listowner. If he follows the rules, I have no qualms about him staying. Jim wrote back and said he was having some kind of trouble with his mail program, I believe it was. I've been on the Internet over four years and for a long time I sub- scribed to ROOTS-L, the granddaddy of them all. Their address was at the University of North Dakota at the time, but has since changed as they outgrew the computers in ND. Today they are Rootsweb, the "backer" of this HOWELL-L group and many other such groups. There on Roots-L is where I really learned how it all works. And believe me, those people would pounce on you in nothing flat for sending an attachment! And I mean POUNCE! I remember one stretch of time there were vicious flame wars because people had too many typos and grammatical errors in their postings! And the biggest sin of all was not including an explanative subject line. Many people left the listserve, in tears, I am sure. It got quite brutal. Actually, too brutal, I thought. But I stayed on because there was such good genealogy being discussed. And I made EXTRA sure all my posts were written well and typed perfectly--didn't want to get yelled at! It was just a phenomenal learning experience for me, being on Roots-L those early Internet years of mine. There were some professional genealogists on Roots-L together with just regular hobbyists, who all had very high standards. They had no time for errors nor for reading garbage. And I cannot really disagree with that. People who want to research their families and establish relationships according to the established rules of proof, may want to publish their findings some day. In essence, they are writing a "legal brief." All of the legal system's rules of proof and evidence apply in serious genealogical writings. So those high standards of many of the people on Roots-L applied to every facet of genealogy in which they became involved, which, of course, included listserves. Each of us has our own agenda in our reserach. But regardless of what that is--the listserve rules should be followed by all. So, those of you here on HOWELL-L, who say "I haven't seen any posts that bothered me," maybe have not been on a listserve that follows the rules to a T. Maybe following the rules so closely is excessive, I don't know. But I do know that each listserve develops its own unique personality and level of expertise through the guidance of the list- owner and the subscribers themselves. The group is what we make it. What level of quality do we want here? Do we want to be serious and down to business and striving for perfection, or will we end up sharing recipes and talking sports scores? I'm sure there's a happy medium. But remember that if we gravitate to the lower end, many of the more serious researchers will just UNsubscribe. And it will be our loss, as we could learn many things from those individuals. My two cents worth. Resa Nichols Hennings Houston