Hi Mary,

My apologies, I see you're a seasoned poster, sometimes that's missed when people have multiple user names.

This message board doesn't work like a mail list. You can't subscribe to it. This board is not "gate-wayed" to a rootsweb mail list, not to be confused with rootsweb message boards which are one in the same as Ancestry.com message boards.

When you initiate or reply to a post, directly underneath there is a small box and "Send me an alert when anyone replies to this thread." You can check or uncheck that box to receive alerts to a particular thread. You may also have the Denomme message board in your favorites and have checked it to receive alerts to postings on the board. You might want to review Board Faqs, for up to date information on how the boards work and how to use them. The link is at the bottom of this page.

I suspect the spam you are receiving is not from this board or this site.

Unfortunately, the problem with spam is that it's usually self inflicted. The message boards are public, and spambots can and do troll them for email addresses. This is not unique to Ancestry message boards. The best thing you can do is NEVER put your email address in a post on a public message board on the internet. Do you think you may have done that on some occasion? If you do post your email address on public message boards/blogs, "munge" it. An example of munged email address is, myname(at)domain(dot)com.

If you would like people to contact you privately, use the message service (providing you're a fee-subscriber to the ACOM), or you can put your email address (again munge it there) in your profile and direct people to find it there. Again, do not put your email address in a post on the board without munging.

In regard to to your impassioned argument for the family book. Regardless of whether it turns a profit or not, the issue is the book is for sale. This is still not a gray area. As a volunteer board admin, to this and other boards, I don't have the ability to rewrite the rules. This is not a new or unique situation, and I'm afraid it won't be the exception.

If you need help in sorting out your spam issue, or want to contact me, my email address can be found by hitting the Board Information link on the right side of this page, or you can contact me by hitting my user name link.

Until then, Happy Trails