On Wed, 29 Nov 1995, Ryan Mathews wrote:

Nevertheless, as much as I like it here, I don't know if I can stick 
around.  This may sound goofy but... I've never received this much mail 
before, in six years on the Internet.  Not even close.  Today I had one 
hundred eleven messages in my box.  They weren't all from the list, but 
most were.

(Whitewolf responded)

Um...  sorry...

Don't appologize. It isn't your fault.

[snip turning the ML into an alt. newsgroup]

What will the new group name be?

alt.fan.fanfic?

Please don't do this, Wolf.

Let's see, how to phrase this. This is a writers ML and writers are, by
nature, chatty creatures. Some things, like Foxx's debaucle and Brian and
Dode's little snit yesterday have no place here, but some of the spam, like
the Daktari thread, are what I would define as 'spam-fics'. I don't know
about the other folk here, but after 3 or 4 hours of working on a story, it's
kinda nice to just write a little grins and giggles that some of the other
folk enjoy responding to. And if you don't enjoy it, after the first post,
read the subject header and delete the thread that you don't want to read.

And I agree with Damon in that if you take this into an alt. group, we will
loose a lot of the fun and spontanious chit-chat that just happens. I think
this is an integral part of this ML. If you just want to read stories,
download them from r.a.a.s and comment straight to the author.

We are writers. We write. Sometimes spam, sometimes garbage, sometimes
something worth reading, but we write and have found a haven here of similar
minded folk who will listen.

O.K. My 2 cents worth.
  
Shannon