Hi all - I love this list, and I think it's VERY active and has been much help. I haven't been a subscriber all that long, and am wondering what it was like if it's seeming dead to some of you now!!! I am signed up on this list, and one for Cortland Co NY, and for Potter Co. Cameron County is by far the most active, Cortland Co NY is semi-active, and Potter Co is dead and has always been judging by the archives (Mike Wennin is probably the most active submitter on that site too!). Cameron is the most helpful. I did get responses from the messages I posted on Cortland, but they were very general replies -- hazy suggestions about looking at census records, etc. I think the reason the Cameron site is more helpful is because there are so many people enrolled on it. Many of them don't post a lot, but they are there and do respond if something comes up that they know about. It would also be more dead if the site itself were not so active. Mike puts in a lot of work, and it shows and is greatly appreciated! I use this board when I have a question. Most of my replies have come back offline, and I think that is okay because my questions have been pretty specific. I think sometimes that other people get tired of reading minute details about family trees that absolutely do not pertain to them. Of course, the hard-core people like anything to do with genealogy, and sometimes there is a nugget of info in there that you wouldn't get in a private conversation, so the argument about public or private is really a personal argument..... Everybody does what they are most comfortable with. Maybe some of the problem is lack of advertising. Most of the sites have only a menu choice for sign-up. If you're new to this, you probably don't know what the email list is -- I didn't for quite a while until somebody else told me about it and I signed up. And luckily, it was Cameron I was told about. Had it been Potter Co, I probably would have continued thinking the email list was nothing....... So there's my opinion.....I'd hate to see this list go away!! Laura Bent