Thank you, Diana. It's good to get these things sorted out up front. At the risk of getting "off-topic" with the "off-topic" thread, I will ask one more question for clarification :-) What about the new "Family" SNPs being offered by FTDNA whose likely only value will be to confirm familial relationships within a genealogical time frame? It was posted elsewhere that FTDNA would even be contacting various surname project admins to further their R&D of these products. I was going to ask they list if any surname project admins had been contacted yet and if they thought they would be a benefit. Cheers, David. P.S. I am posted these queries to the list instead of directly to you in case others have the same questions. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Diana Gale Matthiesen Sent: July 24, 2008 10:07 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Y-DNA-projects] off topic Thank you for asking, David, and for giving me an opportunity to discuss the reasons for the limitations of the list. I'm going to be pretty strict about keeping the focus here on STR testing and Y-DNA surname projects, in genealogical time. It is not my intention for this list to compete with GENEALOGY-DNA where haplogroups, ethnicity, and deep ancestry are major topics of discussion. Please keep in mind that RootsWeb would not have given me this list if I hadn't defined it in such a way that it doesn't compete with existing lists. When you reach the point in your research where you're sliding off the paper trail and correlating haplogroups, geography, and ethnicity, you are really at the point where the discussion would be better taken to a haplogroup list or regional list, anyway. But here, too, the reason for restricting discussion on this list is not that there is no intellectual connection between the topics, but that I've had to narrowly define the list in order to get the list. So, to answer you directly... Yes, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I would have to consider the topics you mention in your last paragraph to be off topic for the list. Diana P.S. Your query brings up the issue of creating mailing lists, so I'll start another thread.