Howdy -

Just wanted to correct one point on email listservs which is that they can
be set up fairly easily and with minimal ongoing effort by the list manager.
The key to preventing spam is to only allow list members to post to the list
(indeed, this is how tweeters and most other birding lists are set up and
how spam is kept out of the list). Spammers just do not have the ability to
easily subscribe "robotically" to the myriad of lists out there. Google and
Yahoo have pretty good list management tools - I'm in a number of groups on
each and have also set up a few and there is no problem w/ spam.

That beng said, and speaking mostly as a lurker, I don't think tweeters is
an inappropriate place for these sorts of natural history discussions and
they don't seem to overwhelm the list. (at least from where I sit on the far
eastern edge of tweeterland! )

--
Charles Swift
Moscow, ID
chaetura at gmail.com
http://www.uidaho.edu/~charless