During the period of time I have been Admin of this list, I have noticed it to be one of the most helpful lists I am familiar with. With well over 700 subscribers, folks help each other in so many different ways, and that always makes a List Admin's efforts so much more enjoyable, and I suspect that has a lot to do with why this list has so many loyal subscribers. Many are quite knowledgeable and always willing to help others who are. . .well, not so knowledgeable but eager to learn and seeking help. That said, my reason for posting this is to discuss one of the problematic area evolving from this very large and busy list, and ask for the overall help of all subscribers in resolving it. With any list as large and active as this one any problem tends to get magnified and out of hand rather easily, and we are no different in that respect. I have tried personally monitoring posts in the past, returning them to subscribers asking that they be modified, but this always gets folks upset with me. L Also, to put my own situation into perspective, this is not my JOB as many of you seem to believe. I am just a volunteer with an avid interest in genealogy, just like most of you, and though I don't have "a real job" any more (I'm retired) I do have a family with grandkids (and 2nd great-grandchild due this month) and most of the family responsibilities that most of you have, including my own genealogy research. I administer lists because I enjoy doing it, and have made a lot of long standing friends doing so. The most common problem areas are as follows: 1. When replying to a post back to the list, the post you are replying to needs to be edited leaving ONLY a brief portion of it directly pertaining to your reply. PLEASE NOTE - If the taglines (the bottom lines put on all posts by RootsWeb) are still on the previous post, they need to be deleted because the system will put another set on your own post causing duplication. 2. Additionally to #1 above, editing the reply is doubly important for those of you subscribing in digest format. Not only do you need to edit the digest when replying, but PLEASE also remember not to reuse the digest subject line, and change it to something relative to the subject of your reply. 3. Please stick to the list topic in all on-list postings. This is pretty self-explanatory, and in a few words the appropriate list topic is the genealogy of Lanarkshire, Scotland. That covers a pretty broad spectrum of topics, but we still manage to stray off topic more often than we should. The three areas above seem to be the most common, but there are others. If we can make some progress in those areas alone, it will really make a big difference. I know it seems to some that I am only being petty in even mentioning this, and a couple of you have called me a "list dictator" (and worse! L ) after having posts rejected, but on a list this large and active this causes problems most of you are unaware of, so PLEASE let's see if we can return things back closer to what they should be. We do not live in a perfect world, and this list will never be perfect in that respect either, but we very much need to at least make some progress in that respect. David E. Cann lanark-admin@rootsweb.com Admin of the Lanarkshire, Scotland mailing list on RootsWeb List information: http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/index/intl/SCT/LANARK.html