My friends - The tenured members of this List, when they see the Subject line reading "Administratavia", very likely say to themselves, "What's happened now?", as these sorts of posts are generally connected with unfortunate circumstances in which List guidelines have been violated, resulting in the removal of a subscriber, or some other unpleasantness. Today, however, such is not the case. I want to make you aware of a growing problem that I am experiencing, which is placing me in the old "Catch-22" scenario. Over the past six to eight weeks, I have been noticing requests for data coming to me from e-mail addresses that are not familiar. Since we have nearly 600 subscribers to this List, and about 100 to each of the other three lists which I host in the JP(Marshall, Hickman and Calloway), I cannot, obviously, be familiar with everyone's address. However, I started checking these unusual addresses against the subscriber lists, and, over these weeks, I found that I have received a total of 97 data requests from people who do not subscribe to any of the lists which I host. Probably 75% of them are requests for a land grants text file, and the other 25% are coming from visitors to the JP and other lists' archives. The JP Land Grants web page has no meta tags, and the search engine crawlers should not be picking up that web site, although I now see that Altavista has it shown as "Blank". Some of the added traffic may be coming from that link. As I am sure you can appreciate, I try very diligently to respond to data requests for our subscribers within 48 hours. Usually, I get the responses back within 24 hours. As our JP List has grown, so, too, have the requests for data, which is to be expected. The dilemma I am now facing, on a growing scale, is what to do with these "external" requests(requests from folks who are not subscribers). I do not want to simply ignore the requests(even though, in the case of land grants requests, the JP Land Grants web site states clearly that the use of that page is for subscribers to the three lists only) I am getting, but, by the same token, I think my first loyalty must be to subscribers of this List, and to the subscribers of the other lists which I host. That, then, leads to the incidences of people subscribing to the List only long enough to get the file they want and then unsubbing. So it is a thorny problem, and I am not certain yet what action I will take. I may have to take down the JP Land Grants web site, although I do not want to do that, as I think it is a resource for all of us, and especially for new subscribers who join us. It all boils down to a matter of time, in the last analysis. I am stretched pretty thin as it is now, and handling additional requests from folks who are not a part of our List "family" takes away from my being able to do other things for the List. I'll keep you posted on how this all plays out, but since this situation has a direct effect on this List and its subscribers, I wanted to make you aware of it. I will be back shortly with today's data posting. -B ============================================================