Hi, everyone, Ava Nackman, list administrator here. It's been a while since you all heard from me. Things have been getting busy on the list lately, which in many ways is a great thing. But this also means that we all need to take special care before hitting that reply button. Please stop and think about two key things: (1) Is my message something that will be of potential interest/benefit to multiple members? Or is it of a personal nature or so specific that only one member needs to hear it? If the former, then, by all means, reply to all. If the latter, please take a moment to change the email address so that your response goes only to the individual(s) to which your conversation is remotely relevant. (2) Have I checked out the subject line to ensure that it clearly identifies the nature of my correspondence? If researching/discussing a particular family, period of time, location in the county, and/or topic of genealogical interest, that should all be concisely noted in your subject heading. It is easy to have the subject of an email thread change over time, and it gets very confusing to others on the list when the subject heading on the email doesn't keep up! An up-to-date subject heading also ensures that someone who may be able to help you notices and reads your email, and allows others who can't contribute to quickly eliminate an email from their inbox. Hopefully, if everyone works at remembering to think about the above before hitting the reply button, we can keep our email traffic at a manageable level. However, should anyone feel that, while they love being on the list, it is getting too difficult for them to manage their inbox, they are welcome to contact me and I will put them in digest only mode. This means that they will receive only ONE email a day from our list, but that email will first list all of the subject headers for all emails sent that day, followed by the full text of all of those emails. (NOTE: The more people request digest mode, the more important it becomes to craft a meaningful and accurate subject header for your emails, or else they won't get read!) If digest mode turns out to not be your cup of tea, I can easily switch you back. Contact me at admin I do also want to stress, however, that I don't mean to discourage interesting discussion on topics of interest to DOGS members on this list! Please never hesitate to email when you have a relevant question or an interesting tidbit that could assist others in their research. We are here to help and enlighten one another! Ava