Sophocleese, I hadn't thought of the chatter serving to refresh the thread - good point. Like saying "we still don't have your answer, but we haven't forgotten you."

Cara, I sounded grumpy and I apologise. I'm presently sick as a dog. I guess the only thing I was trying to say was I wasn't talking about universal rules (I hate 'em) and I wondered what the feelings of new folks actually were. It's easy for me to say "I think it looks this way to people" when I really don't know. I do believe Mudcat is way above most places on the Internet or Usenet (newsgroups) when it comes to niceness.