Dear loyal listers, Time to celebrate! I have just finished righting our ship. If I switched you to digest mode, you're now back in list mode, and you should be receiving this message that way. Hooray! Of course you're asking how we got in this pickle (and it's the same reason India lost its list mode). Here's what my Rootsweb contact told me: "We have finally figured out what was causing the problem with the individual (mail/list mode) mailings from your SCT-WIGTOWNSHIRE mailing list. The problem was related to the Non-digest Footer that you added to the list. When I removed the non-digest footer from the list, the test mailing that I sent out...went to those subscribed in mail mode, which included you and your assistant admins. [I left Crawford, Bruce, and me in list mode to detect when it was restored.]....The next thing that I need to do is determine what it was about the information you placed into the non-digest footer that caused this problem or if anything at all placed into this footer causes the problem. In the interim, please do not place anything into the non-digest footer until I let you know about my findings. Please accept our apologies for how long it has taken to identify the problem and resolve it." Last January Crawford, Bruce, and I decided to start using the non-digest footer to stir up our list. It had become a bit sleepy, so we hoped to encourage posts with our footer nudges. Those of you who were subbed back then may recall my posts to that effect: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/sct-wigtownshire/2013-01/1357436037 ...Sometimes people forget about our rules and procedures, so starting now we'll amend the footer that accompanies each post to provide memory refreshers. That includes throwing in links that may interest newbies (not to mention us oldies who may have forgotten about them). Keep your eye on the footer! http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/sct-wigtownshire/2013-01/1358105795 As promised, we're proceeding with "memory refreshers." Each time we change the message footer, we'll let you know... Until now, I haven't been able to pinpoint when we lost list mode, but now I know it was on 13 Jan 2013 when I started using the non-digest footer to spark list interest. You may be interested in these factoids about our ordeal: . It took about a month to determine that we'd lost list mode and that I had to put all of us in digest mode to keep our list alive. I moved all our list moders -- about 75% of us -- to digest mode on 11 Feb 2013 -- almost NINE months ago! . We had 532 members when I made the switch. There've been 117 subs and unsubs since then, but we've come out whole -- we have 528 subscribers today. So there you have it. We're back in business. Needless to say, I won't be using the non-digest footer again till I get the all-clear! Mary P.S. If you're not in the mode you want -- list vs. digest -- please DO NOT post to the list. Write me privately, and I'll gladly change you.