Frank has a good point - the list can be in effect "spammed" by
chit-chat about how to contact various folks.  That said,  if people
would a) just send one and one only request regarding a member of the
Conchological Community they have lost contact with, or need to get in
touch with (***after trying all other possibilities***), and more
importantly,  b) send ALL replies to such messages **privately**,   then
i see this as a legitimate function of the list - facilitating
communication between conchologists.  The problem is mostly that people
are sometimes not careful to reply privately.    I wonder if the list
owners could now consider having list messages reply to the sender
instead of the whole list - making them reply to the list as a whole was
 initially a great idea to stimulate discussion and get the list
established, but perhaps it is time to move on, in order to eliminate
most of the private messages which get sent to the list.

From the land of Fluffy White Stuff,
Ross M.

William M. Frank wrote:

     All this other stuff about "missing people" is to me is just "spam"
and certainly of no interest to a vast
     majority of people who care about shells.  Please -- no more.