Hello, everyone! You probably have all gotten a private invitation letter from me, and perhaps more than one. I apologize for the duplicates.....I tried to weed them out. I'm thrilled to see all of you here. My family is getting tired of me cheering each time I get a new subscriber! I hope to hear from each of you in the near future, with queries, questions, stories about your families, discriptions of your genealogy websites, and so forth. I would like us all to be friends.....We're all at least *distant* relatives. My goal for this list is that we all find our HOW we are related, find new relations, and locate more ancestors! If you want to see what you've *already* missed, check the list archives! There's a spam attack against some of the lists on Rootsweb, lately. Hopefully, being new, our list will escape the attack. *If spammed on this list* -- Do NOT respond on the list! You may either forward the post **with FULL headers** to Tim Pierce at [email protected], or just forward it to me, or complain to me, or whatever. If you read it on the list, everyone else already has had to read it, and doesn't want to hear you complain about it! If all this tires you out just reading it.....You've been on lists and newsgroups before, and are just sick of spam. Pushing the delete key is really the easiest thing. Under No Circumstances respond to the spammer, on or off the list! Other NO NOs.....Do NOT ever send the entire digest back to the list in a reply. This is a personal bugabear. I hope that you won't even send whole messages back to the list, unless the entire thing is needed for reference. The taglines should NEVER be sent back. Learn to edit creatively! (On the other hand, do use short quotes when responding to someone on list. Some people get a LOT of mail, and just the answer, with no question, is very puzzling sometimes.) I'll write separately about virus warnings, chain letters, urban legends and other list-trash. Quoting Cheryl McCombs: "For more information on these types of messages, check out this page: <http://home.earthlink.net/~cmccombs/vrscntr.htm>. I have placed several urls there pertaining to the subject. "If people would just take the time to *think and check it out*, before hitting the panic button, then it would save thousands of useless messages from being processed! Remember that you can't help people by giving them false information. Check your information! Find the facts FIRST!" I'm really open to suggestions, and offers of help. I would like to start a website for both my lists, McBee-L and Baysinger-L, with easy links to the GenConnect boards, other commonly used genealogical links, lists of researchers and their lines, and so forth. When you visit a website you particularly like, forward the URL to me, would you? I don't know anything about HTML, but I guess I'm going to learn, unless someone steps forward and offers to be webmaster/mistress? Have you any suggestions about the way the list is formatted? I have 10 taglines I can fill any way I like.....So far I have 5 that each rotate twice. Send me your suggestions -- Mailto:[email protected] Finally, if any of you are NOT Rootsweb supporters -- which you do NOT have to be, to get this list, or use GenConnect -- you are missing the boat, genealogically. Visit <http://www.rootsweb.com> to find out what you're missing! All the best to all my relations, Valorie, IBSSG Black Diamond, Washington USA Proud sponsor of Rootsweb, which provides this list to you!