discussion deadlines

Jean Benabou has enquired, and this is also to inform other relatively recent subscribers who, like him, may be unfamiliar with an informal procedure used during the 16 years the categories mailing list has been operating. On roughly a half dozen occasions, though none in at least a couple of years, I have judged that a discussion was becoming, as Jean Benabou wrote, `a bit futile', usually after a couple of weeks. In those cases, as in the current one, subscribers were invited to post any further comments within a short period. Making this procedure formal was not necessary in the past, and I do not intend to make it so now. The deadline today was, of course, equally valid for everybody. Best wishes, Bob Rosebrugh