BONJOUR, everyone! The ILSTANNE listers are very nearly perfect, as we all know, so why would we need rules??? That's the question! But it seems we should have rules on record, so here goes. PLEASE COPY AND KEEP THIS MESSAGE - THANK YOU! The ILSTANNE list is presently installed at rootsweb.com, which is the home of the RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative. See http://www.rootsweb.com for information about RootsWeb. It's not necessary to pay anything to subscribe to any of RootsWeb's surname mailing lists, but if you like what RootsWeb does, please consider becoming a member ($12.00 per year) or sponsor ($24.00 per year). The ILSTANNE administrator/custodian is Ginny Crawford. Contact me directly at VCrawf@aol.com. 1. Message format: Please submit messages only in plain text. 2. Attachments: Please don't send ANYattachments; they gum up the works. Likewise, long pedigrees and GEDCOM-type stuff. Instead, copy and paste a brief sample of what you want to send right into your out-going eMail. If someone wants to know more, the whole thing can be sent to that person later, off list. 3. Subject Lines: Please provide each message with a sensible and infor mative headline - unless you have a good reason for a teaser, such as mine, above! 4. Advertising: no outright ads, please - but it is certainly acceptable to send brief information about books and other resource material that may be of interest to the ILSTANNE listers. When in doubt, send me a direct email with the particulars. 5. Copyright: in theory, any person sending a message to this list retains the copyright to it. By sending the message, you impliedly give the list custodian permission to distribute copies of the message to other list members, to store archival copies of the message, and to make the archival copies available to the Internet community at large. You also grant to other list members the right to quote your message in their replies, but see #6, below! 6. Quotes: please quote ONLY A BRIEF BIT of the message you are answering - just enough to let other readers know what you are about. If your computer automatically copies the entire message to which you are responding, please disable that feature. Otherwise, our weekly ILSTANNE DIGEST contains mostly repeats - very off-putting! 7. Archives: At present archival copies are stored at rootsweb.com and can be retrieved by anyone. To get a list of the messages that have been archived, send a message to ILSTANNE-L-request@rootsweb.com with the subject archive SEARCH Subject: latest/* and nothing in the body of the message. 8. . No-Nos. Please do not send huge chunks of someone else's current work. Don't send messages exceeding 8 kilobytes in length. Please don't wander too far off-topic. No spam or mean-spirited comment (not that we ever would!). If someone else violates these rules, please do not send their message back to this list! That just magnifies the problem, and defeats the anti-spam defenses at Rootsweb. Best to all - we're the greatest!!!! Ginny