Okay, I have now gone through all my email up to this one to which I am replying in which I announced something I was going to try in order to curb the off topic messages. I don't know that I am making a lot of headway in catching up on my email because now there are a lot ahead of this one and undoubtedly a lot of them are off topic. I did try to reply privately to those off topic messages, but I was not entirely successful. The first one I just gave up and sent it to the list and by now you have probably seen the explanation I gave in that one as to why I did so. The second one I tried to reply to gave me the same problem so I just went ahead and did not reply to it at all. Its domain was the same as the first so I thought that the problem was with the domain. As I continued, though, I was unable to reply to any of them except for the ones from some people with whom I was already engaged in a private discussion. What I did was to erase the Bookshare discussion address from the address field and paste the address I got from the email in its place. When I tried to send I was informed that the address was an invalid email address. I tried erasing that address and typing it in the address field character by character, but the result was the same. I have no idea what the problem was because I did the same thing with one from one of the people with whom I was already conversing privately and it worked just fine. Anyway, except for that first one I just refrained from replying. That was difficult because I really did have some replies even if the messages were considerably off topic. The ones I most wanted to reply to were the ones that were personal attacks against me. That desire was not so much a desire to defend myself as it was a desire to plead for some tolerance for alternative ideas and opinions. Really, there are so many people in this world who have points of view that are different from your own that you can only make yourself perpetually unhappy by constantly getting so upset over that fact. For my own sake, though, if not for other reasons I decided that it was time to do something about the plethora of off topic messages. One of the reasons that I am falling behind my email is because of the off list conversation I have gotten into that was engendered by the off topic discussion on list. It is being conducted on a much higher intellectual level and so requires a good deal more thought, so responding to nasty personal attacks too, especially when I am such a slow typist is just a little too much. As I proceed through my email I am sure that there will be more such off topic messages and I will see how I will react when I get to them and how much I can quell the urge to respond, but at least I am trying to bring this nastiness to a halt. It would really help, though, if I could get some cooperation from the rest of you. It is really not necessary to make snide remarks just because you disagree with someone. table with 2 columns and 6 rows Subj: [bookshare-discuss] Curbing the off topic messages. Date: 1/24/2009 11:01:40 PM Eastern Standard Time From: Rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx Reply-to: bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To: bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent from the Internet (Details) table end Folks, right now I have fifty-five messages in my in box and I have to get off the computer to do some of the other things that life consists of. When I get back it is hard to tell how many messages I will have piled up. This is what I meant when I said that the off topic discussions are a problem for me too because they take up too much of my time. So I am going to try something. For at least the messages I have waiting for me right now, if I have a response and the message is clearly off topic and if the sender's email is visible I am going to paste that email address into the address field and reply privately. Now if those who get private messages from me do not have a reply of their own then the off topic discussion could dwindle pretty quickly. I realise that I am running the risk of being overwhelmed by off list messages and if that happens I am not sure how I will handle it. I may just have to start ignoring some of you. But let's see how this works for right now. ************** A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1215855013x1201028747/aol?redir=http://www.fre ecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=668072%26hmpgID=62%26bcd=DecemailfooterNO 62) ************** A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1215855013x1201028747/aol?redir=http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=668072%26hmpgID=62%26bcd =DecemailfooterNO62)