There have been messages forwarded to the mailing lists about a missing child. These have been addressed to numerous lists. These are considered SPAM. Spam is what brought MAISER down last spring. A missing child is a parents worse nightmare, but there are more appropriate places to post these messages on the internet. The following is from one of the owners of Rootweb. "Obviously, posting one message to a single list isn't a problem at all. However, CCing a "roll call" to forty lists, which slams the server with forty simultaneous posts when your post goes through and then slams the server forty times again whenever anyone replies, is NOT OK. Obviously, using SmartList to retrieve a handful of messages is OK. Using SmartList to retrieve 8,000 archived messages hammers the system and is not OK. Obviously, all genealogical traffic and even a lot of social traffic is OK. But things that "ring" the server by jumping virus-like from list to list, like virus hoaxes, FCC announcements, and missing children posts, etc., are NOT OK. (General rule: never, ever post or repost a message that *asks* people to repost it.) Flames are another thing that can "ring" a server, by getting a very large number of folks to post in quick succession. Besides being good netiquette, avoiding flame wars is good for the health of the servers. Does all that make sense? Just think about how much traffic, especially nearly simultaneous traffic, your post will cause. If in doubt, write to listowners for advice. Cheers, B. -- Dr. Brian Leverich Co-moderator, soc.genealogy.methods/GENMTD- L RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative http://www.rootsweb. com/ P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798 [email protected] com" (There is also a FCC announcement making the rounds of lists, from what I have read, it is old news and people are passing it around once again like they did last year.) ____ Nancy Lohbrunner [email protected]