<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

The Listowners attempt to reduce the number of list messages through
many different techniques.  The goal is to allow complete discussion of
CD- and GF-related subjects while reducing the number of extraneous
messages.  Volume of mail is the number one complaint of most people
who suscribe to a e-mail lists, and ours is no exception.

Recently there have been many requests for information in a specific
city or area.  While this obviously helps the individual celiac, it
requires that nearly 2000 others read each request, and the number of
these requests is getting rather large.  The Listowners would like to
reduce the number of these postings, but still allow each subscriber to
obtain the desired information.

Celiacs know through experience that it is difficult to enjoy a normal
and wonderful lifestyle without the assistance of other celiacs.  This
assistance can be as simple as a kind word to a newly diagnosed celiac
or advice on how to convert that special recipe that was always served
by your mother at family outings.

We obtain this assistance through contacts at our local support groups
and (since November 1994) by posting questions and replies to this List.
A local celiac can often be of the greatest assistance about products,
locations, medical professionals, or group meetings.  But how to locate
someone in a certain city is a challenge.  There are at least three ways
to find this information.  The Listowners request that we utilize the
first two methods as much as possible, and only use the third method
when other methods have failed.

1) Contact local support groups directly for information specific to the
   groups' areas.  There are five lists of groups available.  USA,
   Canada, Italy, and Finland each have their own list of support
   groups, and the fifth list covers all the other countries.  For each
   group, there are contact names, addresses, phone numbers, and in many
   cases, e-mail addresses.

   The easiest way to view these lists is to visit our WWW site at St.
   Johns:

      http://rdz.stjohns.edu/library/medic/celiac/index.html#support

   Ted Hodge also maintains web page where these lists can be found at:

      http://www.fastlane.net/homepages/thodge/archive.htm#support

   To obtain the files by e-mail, send an e-mail message to:

      [log in to unmask]

   The body of the e-mail message should contain one or more of these
   commands, depending on which lists you want:

      GET CELIAC GROUPSUS
      GET CELIAC GROUPSCA
      GET CELIAC GROUPSIT
      GET CELIAC GROUPSFI
      GET CELIAC GROUPSIN

   We invite anyone that is willing to act as a local point of contact
   for celiac questions to send a private message to the Listowners.  As
   a resource contact you are not required to hold formal meetings; you
   would just act as a point of reference for local information requests
   to the best of your availabilty.

2) We ask all subscribers to sign their messages with their name, e-mail
   address, and location (city, state/province, country).  As you
   receive posts from the List, you can then keep an eye out for people
   local to an area you are interested in and then contact them directly
   to exchange local information.  (We would always hope that
   information of value to all the subscribers would still be posted to
   the list, of course.)  Your location is critical when others evaluate
   a possible response to your posts in regard to your location.

   We understand that all programs do not have automatic signature
   capability, but these few seconds of extra work can open the doors to
   new friends and be of invaluable assistance to other celiacs looking
   for something in your hometown.  The volume of additional mail you
   may get from disclosing your location should not be a problem.  Even
   those that live in high population areas such New York, Los Angeles,
   or Toronto do not receive more than a few requests per month.

3) The least desirable choice is to post a message to the List asking if
   anyone knows information about a certain city/area.  It is true that
   you will usually reach a few subscribers in the desired area, but for
   most of the nearly 2000 subscribers it is one more piece of
   irrelevant e-mail to sort through.  (Though of course you may reach
   people who previously lived in the area that you would have otherwise
   missed.)

   If the first two methods for obtaining local information fail to help
   you, then you can make a post to the list asking for help.  We ask
   that you note the area of interest in the "Subject:"  field.  For
   example, "GF Restaurants in Medford, OR?"; or "Need Pediatric GI in
   Rutland, VT".  This allows people not in that area to delete the post
   without having to read it.

This issue is brought up as a means of keeping the number of postings
under control as we continue to grow.  For each of us there is a point
at which the number of messages is too large for us to continue sorting
through them for new information.  At that point a person signs off the
list.  When that happens, the list loses its ability to help that celiac
and the list no longer benefits from the departed subscriber's
experiences.

For the Listowners,

Jim Lyles ........ <[log in to unmask]> ........ Holly, Michigan, USA