Hi, everybody! Larry and Karen and the Rootsweb folks have gotten the Pruitt list moved to Rootsweb. What you see below is information that I cut and pasted from the letter that Rootsweb sent to me as list owner. Please note: if list messages addressed to you bounce 4 times (and I think that's four CONSECUTIVE times, not just four random bounces over a period of time), the software will AUTOMATICALLY unsubscribe you. This could be a problem if you go on vacation and your mailbox fills up while you're gone, causing email to bounce. It also may be a problem for those of us on AOL; I'm subscribed to the list both here and through my AOL account, so I'll try to keep up with bounces and see what we can do. Now, before y'all go on to read the subscribe/unsubscribe and posting instructions, I have a question. This is not a rhetorical question; answers are expected: Before Maiser crashed, the Pruitt list had NO regular activity. Yet I regularly got email from various list members that said, "Oh, so-and-so and I just traded our info and filled in lots of blank spaces." Oh, really? Folks, the whole purpose of this list is to share your information WITH THE LIST. So my question to each of you is this: Are you, or are you not, willing to share the information that you have with EVERYONE on the list? And akin to that: Do you plan to participate in this list? It's my understanding that Rootsweb normally charges a fee for hosting a surname mailing list, and they've waived those fees for the lists that have been moved over since Maiser crashed. However, if this list is going to have 40 to 50 subscribers and if it's still going to average fewer than 3 postings a month, I'm going to ask the folks at Rootsweb to close down the list and free up the resources for other researchers. So let's hear it from each of you - posted TO THE LIST, please. Do you plan to participate, and what are your ideas for making this list a useful and growing resource? And now on to the clips from the sample welcome letters. I. Your new RootsWeb mailing list: OK, good news: your mailing list is ready to roll. Briefly (very), people can subscribe to your list in mail mode by sending a message to [email protected] that contains the word subscribe and nothing else. If they prefer digest mode, they should send the command instead to [email protected] To unsubscribe, they should send the command "unsubscribe" to Pruitt [email protected] (if in mail mode) or [email protected] (if in digest mode.) To switch from one mode to the other, they should unsubscribe from one and then subscribe to the other. There is no "no mail" mode -- if they want messages to stop, they should simply unsubscribe. To post to both Pruitt-L and Pruitt-D, messages should be sent to [email protected] Messages sent there will appear both places. The downside of owning a mailing list are the bounce messages. People will sign on with broken addresses, or they'll change ISPs and not unsubscribe first, or their mailboxes will fill up, etc. Oone of the "smart" things about SmartList is that after four bounces, it automatically removes the subscriber from the mailing list. Welcome to the PRUITT mailing list! You are currently subscribed in "mail mode", which means that you will receive every posting made to as a separate e-mail. The directions on how to change to digest mode are given below. 1. How to unsubscribe. Send a message to Pruitt [email protected] that contains (in the body of the message) the command unsubscribe and no additional text. 2. How to subscribe. Whatever you just did worked, or you'd not be getting this message. But for future reference (for instance, if your subscription is cancelled for whatever reason and you want to resubscribe), just send the command "subscribe" to [email protected] 3. How to change to digest mode (several postings are combined and sent to you together as a single large message). There are two steps. First, send the command "unsubscribe" to [email protected] to discontinue mail mode. Second, send the command "subscribe" to [email protected] to start receiving digests. 4. How to change to NOMAIL mode. There is no formal NOMAIL mode. All you have to do is follow the directions above and unsubscribe when you want the messages to stop, and then when you want them to start again, simply subscribe again. 5. If you'd like to post a message so everyone on the mailing list receives it, just send it to [email protected] It will then be sent on to everyone in both mail and digest mode. You don't need to send it explicitly to both. Donna B. in Raleigh, NC - researching 3/4 of Campbell County, Tennessee, including the following surnames: Ayers Baird Bowman Branam Carroll Cox Cupp Early Ellis Huddleston Hurst King Leach Lowe Ridenour Sharp Stanfill