On my (Moderated) list BALT-L I take the line that if an event I hear about is news to me its likley to be news to my readers. I collect short queries, replies and announcements for collation in a single message two or three times a week and include such 'commercial' material in the section "announcements" sometimes headed with a line saying ' Commercial information distributed as a public service '. That gets the information across and guards against repeat bombardments, allegations of endorsement etc... How does this strike other owmers? (Where a controversial thread emerges I sometimes find it useful to collate several short messages in the thread into one 'magazine' message. Advantage - readers see several points of view at one go and are perhaps less likely to jump for the reply key...) Edis Bevan