<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>
 
Recently there has been a large number of information requests for
assistance in a specific city.  While this obviously helps the
individual Celiac, it requires that 1400 others read each request, and
the number of these requests is getting unmanageable.  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 group
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 four ways
to find this information.  The Listowners request that we utilize the
first three methods as much as possible, and only use the fourth method
when other methods have failed.
 
1) Contact local support groups directly for information specific to the
groups' areas.  There are three lists of groups available from the list,
covering USA, Canada, and International.  To get these lists, send a
command to [log in to unmask] containing one or more of these
commands:
 
     GET CELIAC GROUPSUS CELIAC
     GET CELIAC GROUPSCA CELIAC
     GET CELIAC GROUPSIN CELIAC
 
For each group, there are contact names, addresses, phone numbers, and
in many cases, e-mail addresses.
 
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.  These
resource contacts are not required to hold formal meetings, just act as
a point of reference for information requests.
 
2) We ask all subscribers to sign their messages with their name, e-mail
address, and location (city, state, 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.)
 
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 another celiac 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 the major destinations
like New York, Los Angeles, or Orlando do not receive more than a few
requests per month.
 
4) The least desirable choice is to post a message to the List asking
if anyone knows information about a certain city.  True this gets to a
few subscribers in every city but the other 1400 readers have one
additional piece of mail.  (We understand that a transplanted person may
have some insight on his/her old hometown).
 
This issue is brought up as a means of keeping the number of postings
under control as we continue to grow.  We each find a point where the
amount of information is too great for the volume of messages.  At that
point we signoff.  The List then loses its ability to contribute
information to a celiac and the List is unable to benefit from a
departed subscriber's experiences.
 
For the Listowners
 
Michael Jones ([log in to unmask]) Orlando, FL USA