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I have tried getting the individual posts and then switched to the Digest hoping it would be a readable and useful info source. I am still being overwhelmed. I'm about ready to switch off of the list and come back in a few months to see if it is still pretty much a chat room. Seems like most of the e-mail is among just a few individuals and is largely of a personal nature that could be better placed direct rather than forwarding a reply lazily back to the list. One thing that would help very much. Those of us from the "bad ol' days" (pre-electronic communications!) corresponded pretty much by writing letters back and forth with an occasional phone call. It wasn't ever considered necessary to include in our reply a copy of what we had received from a person. That just took up more space (and could cost extra postage). Why do some people think it is necessary now? By the time a relatively long first post gets replied to several times plus forwarding, etc., a lot of space is used up. Sure, we have delete keys, but why burden the recipient with the task of sorting through everything. I believe the originator should shoulder some of that responsibility. Think of it this way, if the sender takes an extra 5 minutes in good formatting of a post to the list that might save only 15 seconds with each recipient, that is a total time savings of over 6.5 hours among 1600 participants for one single post. Looking at it on an individual basis, 25 posts per day at 15 seconds each isn't worth much (only about 6 minutes per day), but list wide it is significant. Finally, and then I'll get off my soapbox, in letters we used to write, it wasn't necessary to put cutesy expressions as to whether we were smiling, frowning, ducking or whatever, just an occasional "Ha-Ha!" or XOXOXOXO. If someone cannot tell the mood you are in by what you are writing, then you haven't gotten across what you were trying to say in the first place. If you have to tell someone you are teasing, then you shouldn't have written the remark in the first place. Some silliness is great, and I love the jokes, but the continued silliness gets kind of boring. Now I'm just going to stand back, get out my snow shovel and prepare for the mail storm that usually happens when I complain.