I'm not entirely sure that is a fair comment.

I've been thinking about your last comment on the the email system for some time. I think we are talking at cross purposes. Consider my perspective. I volunteer my time for free to help people with programming problems. On top of volunteering my time for that, you are now asking me offer my help to build an email system from scratch. No matter that I am working full time (sorry Hal, this isn't a dig at you), and that I have a life outside my job. No matter that I look at the week ahead and can count the hours of my time that are not accounted for on the fingers of one hand.

Also I'm not certain how offering advice on how to get an email interface on the p2p site up and running suddenly become an issue for me to design and implement a solution to the problem. I was under the impression we were offering suggestions.

I understand Wiley's perspective. They have bought the site and name, spent some money getting things up in the way they thought best, and they aren't really keen on spending more money on the site. My belief is that if Wiley *were* interested in an email interface and put some weight behind it then it would happen.

Let me be frank. p2p started as an email interface. Most of the people who made wrox what is was, ie those who answered the questions, liked the email interface. If an email interface isn't added the experienced people may leave. Speaking personally I'm not happy with the current situation. I'm leaving for a new job this coming Wednesday and I'm tossing up whether to remove all subscriptions to forums and stop answering questions on the same day, basically because of the email thing. There is no question in my mind that I'll stay with other lists (email based) I'm currently on.

Hal, none of this aimed at you. I appreciate that you are in a difficult position. But I also believe that without an email interface, p2p will degenerate. Wiley may be perfectly happy to lose the experienced posters, thinking that others will come to replace them. This may be true, but there is an equal chance those experienced people may not be replaced.

regards
David Cameron