To All Subscribers on the RootsWeb Lists I Manage: (Beers, Godfrey, Kern, Monroe, Richmond, Spicer, Stearns, & Tingley) I give up; the fear mongers on the Internet have won! After the comments I received from some subscribers when I asked people to quit using these lists to forward scare messages, I am not going to manage these lists any longer. I will be notifying the RootsWeb owners to drop the Beers, Godfrey, Kern, Monroe, Richmond, Spicer, Stearns, & Tingley surname lists from the system effective January 31, 1998. If someone wants to take over the management of any of these lists they can contact me by private message before that date and I will try to get ownership of the list transferred to you. Otherwise, these lists will no longer exist after this month. The rest of this message explains my reasons better, but is not very friendly in its tone so you may not want to read it. Please do not send any email to me of any type unless you want to take over a particular surname list of the eight mentioned above. I will just hit the delete button on them. I get really tired of people automatically forwarding these scare messages onto every list and person on their email address list. With only a couple minutes of research, it would be easy to find that 99% (or more) of these messages are completely untrue. Take the example of the recent FCC posting which has been flying around the Internet for the past couple of weeks. People, this has never been a concern, and anyone who had checked it out would have known that. In 1996 the FCC did have a proposal which was looking at the Interstate phone rates. It did not then, and doesn't now, have anything to do with your local phone rates, nor your in state phone rates. In particular it did not propose a per minute access charge for Internet access. This proposal is no longer under consideration and it is a dead issue. It has been dead for a long time now and should not be floating around the Internet any longer. It's just like all the virus hoax messages that keep bouncing around the Internet. It just ain't so! That's why I've always asked people not to use any of these 8 lists to forward this kind of junk. Do you really think your Internet Service Provider (Juno, AOL, MSN, etc.) would fail to notify you if there was something so significant to their customers being considered by any government? But, anyway I'm done; it just isn't worth the aggravation any longer. I hate to see these lists go away, but I don't want anything to do with genealogy any longer. The last person that sent me an email about my request was so uninformed that it was just the straw that broke the camel's back. The comment that really got to me was, "I realize that there are many others like me and I also realize that there are many on these lists to whom expense means nothing. You need to walk in my shoes before you judge me." As the comment goes now days, "Been There, Done That." Does this person really think that I'm that insensitive? Just because I am not living on Social Security doesn't mean that I have any more expendable income than he or she does. The person goes on to say, "I sent it to each list to which I subscribe. Yours was the only negative comment that I received. In fact, a couple of other list owners thanked me for bring it to their attention." Why would they do that, because they didn't take the time to research the matter themselves? Two wrongs do not make a right, and this message was just plain wrong in 1996 when it first hit the Internet and it is still wrong in 1998. It isn't happening and it never happened! Now the person's feelings are hurt and he or she "will send no other postings to the (snipped) list. I have enjoyed it for the past year and will continue to monitor it but shall make no further postings of any kind." I just don't need the aggravation since I haven't been doing active genealogical research for almost a year now. I've only been trying to keep these 8 lists going as a favor to researchers of these surnames. This person and the others like him or her who gave me so much hell over my onerous restrictions has just made me decide not to do favors anymore. The good guy always finishes last, but like the little kid I'm going to take my basketball and go home now. Best wishes in your genealogical research. Chet Chet & Delores Swanson Everett, WA mailto:swanson@premier1.net Check for Family History/Genealogy at: http://www.premier1.net/~swanson/index.htm "If you think that there is good in everybody, then you haven't met everybody" Copyright 1998, Chester Swanson, all rights reserved