Thanks tsuwm, I think that your answer is very reasonable. I think that you are a very helpful board member, able to help us out when we need it without "taking over". I'm sure that you have to exercise self restraint at times when an answer is so obvious to you, yet people are clearly enjoying the journey to the answer. Respect

In the early days we did discusss the idea that people shouldn't jump on a question and come up with the answer straight away because it was taking the fun out of it. Some of us enjoy a challenge and the strange and incorrect answers we come up with along the way are part of the fun, rather than a cause of embarrassment. Given that the time zone range is so great it didn't seem fair to have a question answered before some people even got to see it. I think we have a pretty good balance on that now, correct me, if am wrong

Now that there are so many on-line resources (I particularly like onelook.com for the choice of dictionaries it has at its disposal), we could all look things up for ourselves and never need to ask a question. What is interesting, to me, here is the range of perspectives on offer. If someone researches something and posts a link it adds value to the link because the person who posts it is saying that they believe it to be correct. I often half remember things and find that it is easy to uncover an answer because I have a vague idea what I am looking for. I find this particularly helpful when we are dealing with cross cultural issues as it is hard to read between the lines of websites without the helpful eye of a native or exprect pointing us in the right direction.