And so forth, etcetera, and so on, through whole lot.

By time I'd finished, I felt great. Sherry pats me on back, "Goooood job, now you *only* have 385 ezines to figure out what to do with!" She smiles sweetly, pityingly, at me. "You have such a wide range of ezine categories, dear, why don't you just concentrate on ones that are truly, really, absolutely important to US?" Sherry said that last word with a lotta emphasis, so I figured I should take a long hard look at remainder.

So, once again, I did!

OK, OK, so maybe I don't really need "The Daily Life of The Madagascar Swamp Beetle", "Secrets of Alien Life Under Your Fingernails", or "One Million and One Things To Do With Toothpicks". Click, click, click - all gone! I just hoped that I wouldn't wake up one night, screaming, wondering where my box of toothpicks was! ;()

Hours later - many hours later - fingers and brain throbbing from strain, I turned to Sherry, "OK, that's it, we're down to good oil, pot o'gold, top of heap - you name it!" Sherry looks at me *real* hard now, eyes narrowing, but still she has a smile on her face. Why do I suddenly feel worried, with a sinking feeling in my stomach?

"Well, dear, when you've finished reading each ezine, you *are* going to *delete it*...aren't you...from now on, right?" That...that...word cut to bone. I looked at her, frantically, my eyes widening in horror. Delete? DELETE? I gulped for air as she went on, "And, there'll be no more *printing* also - we do have to use bathroom sometime, right?" Again, cutting like a razor blade. No printing? NO PRINTING? The sweat began to pop from my forehead, my eyes began to glaze, I felt myself going dizzy...

"But...", she continues, almost hypnotically, "why don't you *extract* from each ezine gems of knowledge, those pearls of wisdom, that we must have...before I let you DELETE?" I thought about that, trying to calm down...hmmm, yes, why not open up a text editor, and copy/paste *really* good stuff to a new file. And, one for each day maybe, properly labeled with a headline, and in a special folder...or even on a diskette? Why not, indeed?

So, I did...

A few too many hours later, I beamed at Sherry, "There we are, all extracts nicely filed, *almost* all ezines deleted (hey, I'm not perfect, OK, Rome wasn't built in a day and all that, alright?), and all *categorically* useful information can now be printed on one or maybe two pages, each day or so!" Pause... "Well, no more than three pages, tops." I smiled happily, but probably looked like an idiot. She smiled benignly and patted my hand, making soothing sounds.

"What more can I do?" I ask.

"Take out all this garbage, would you dear?"

Some things never change! :-((

That was two months ago.

Now, in scheme of things, our websites are not what you'd call big hitters, y'know. The three together would get around only 8,000 visitors each month, give or take a few hundred. So, I wasn't expecting big returns, as I knew that majority of people don't like to complete surveys anyway. But, I was hopeful of *some* response.

Well, overall response for that period was around 0.5%! Not very good, I thought, but better than nothing, I suppose. ;-(

"Look at those numbers", I said, plaintively.

"Well, now, dear," says Sherry, "at least you can establish some sort of pattern or percentages..." She looks at me, "At least you'll know more than you did two months ago!"

Hmmm, yes, that's true. Even though numbers are small, distribution of answers is more important, after all. I could have used a number of online services to conduct survey, but I'd decided at outset to collect all data myself. So, after a bit of number mangling, I shouted out to Sherry, still fixated on her screen.

"Lissen t'this: 66% of respondents didn't even *know* about interactive facilities and - hey, this gets better - again only 70% say that they'd only *maybe* use it, even if it was available!" Sherry grunted acknowledgement, but carried on with her work. "Hey," I said, "there's more - two-thirds of those who knew about those tools gave a big thumbs *down* about using them!" Furiously, I went over survey data again, "Get this: not *one* respondent gave a definite "yes" to using HumanClick and suchlike." I shook my head in wonder...

You go into a department store and, after a while, you're sure that all sales staff have been abducted by aliens, right? It's true: you can never find a sales assistant when you want one, right? But...when a sales assistant on a website is begging to be bothered, to give his/her visitor all help needed, nobody wants it! Or, only a very qualified "maybe".

"Well, what about that?" I says to Sherry, finally.

Sherry moved in her chair, but didn't quite get her eyes off prize..."I'm not surprised", she murmurs, as she clicks some more on keyboard and mouse.

"Hmmm," I said to myself, "wonder if HumanClick or LiveHelper did any surveys first *before* they developed their programs?"

Now, there's a thought. After a while, I called out again to Sherry: "So, I guess we'll wait a bit, huh, see what happens with LiveHelper and others? Waddya reckon, eh?"

"What ever you say, dear...what ever you say."