Rob, Regarding your suggestion of having several _topical_ moderators, I don't see the need, _unless_ you are suggesting the we also have separate discussion lists for each topic (which I don't think you were implying). My notion of the work of a moderator is "simply" to handle messages that were rightfully intended to be sent to LISTSERV as command(s) to sign off, change settings/name/options, or to the MUSEUM-L owner regarding some problem with (un)subscribing/receiving the list's messages. Not more. The moderator would _not_ exclude, nor edit, any messages that are probably intended for the subscribers of the list (even if those messages start out with Dear Rob; one exception --there are occasional faux pas where someone sends a painfully personal message mistakenly to the list instead of to an individual-- I'd leave that small exception to the judgement of the moderator, I suppose. On the other hand, maybe others won't learn to be sufficiently careful if we have a moderator holding hands like that). Allison Smith's comments about how ideas/discussion on one topic often (d)evolve into other(s) reflects an extremely common phenomenon on many lists. More than just a phenomenon, it is an important catalyst/stimulus/spark, as Allison also observes. That is one of the major reasons why I dislike the "REPLY-TO original sender" approach to reducing list traffic (it _will_ reduce traffic, but it also will have a significant dampening effect on _substantive_ discussions because most people, most of the time, will not forward back to the list any direct responses they receive. In effect, they will be the list's own worst moderator. And I surely don't expect that people will go to the effort to manually type in the list's address --they're going to continue to hit that REPLY key, just like now. (There _is_ one more feature of LISTSERV that may contribute a solution to Rob's suggested _topical_ moderators. It's the TOPICS feature; I'm going to discuss that offline with Rob and John first --too much detail.) Peter Rauch