>Maybe I am beating a dead horse, but in what way does this charter differ >from Bee-L?????? For one thing, it's NOT A MAILING LIST. It's a USENET NEWS GROUP. This means no esoteric knowledge of its existance is needed, you don't have email cluttering up your box if you're only a casual occasional reader, and ITS A **USENET NEWS** group, so all those "America OnLine" folks can drop in and get info on beekeeping, chat about whether Africanized bees are killer bees or not, and the folks who don't know bees from wasps will have somewhere to go to find out *real information*, when they start talking about the "bees attacking my hotdogs" in USENET NEWS GROUPS like misc.rural. And USENET GROUPS like rec.gardens will have somewhere to refer folks who say "I'd like to talk about bees, are there any beekeeping groups *ON USENET*? This last factor is called "accessibility." To casual netters. And "Malibu Skipper" et.al. maybe will periodically disrupt *them* and not the bee list! Excuse me for yelling in the paragraph above, but sometimes it's necessary to emphasize the difference between this list and the general Usenet. If you want more information on Usenet, I urge you to drop into a couple Usenet newsgroups such as those cited and peruse the tenor and content. Personally, I also think the Usenet group might make a great screening device for people who are serious enough to want to subscribe to the bee list... Getting tired of explaining Usenet News... Jane Beckman [[log in to unmask]]