Let's see if I can get this table to post. I recorded the number of the last message from March 1 of every year, and from that I subtracted the number of the last message of the previous year. That should give us a year-end total number of messages for every year. Here goes:

Year	last msg on March 1	Year total
2013	3485316	169367
2012	3315949	210602
2011	3105347	251607
2010	2853740	274743
2009	2578997	301905
2008	2277092	293565
2007	1983527	300601
2006	1682926	258334
2005	1424592	297175
2004	1127417	225958
2003	901459	240297
2002	661162	251891
2001	409271	221337
2000	187934	126971
1999	60963	38266
1998	22697	19991
1997	2706	2706

Yes, it does look like a drop in the year ending 1 March 2013. Up until then, the number was over 200,000 for twelve years. Dropping to 169,000 certainly isn't the end of the world, but it's a significant drop. Of course, it could be that we have a lower number of messages because Max has instituted better Spam controls. We used to have huge numbers of Spam messages every day, and I don't see as much any more.
-Joe-