Only the person who originates the topic can get automatically notified. I hope that future versions of the Bistro will give you the option to be notified when anyone replies to any of your messages. For more on etiquette, see the CyberSea pages on newsgroups and mailing lists . Ground Zero Bistro is closer to a newsgroup than a list, but the same etiquette applies all around. In your Bistro messages, you can make your own or use some common ones.
Bistro automatically converts certain smilies to an image.
Rather than appearing within the message, they appear on the list of topics and messages. As do the smilies above, the message icons quickly set a tone and an expectation, so use them wisely. It would be too easy for goofy code to throw off the appearance of all the messages in a thread. You may copy and paste text into your message, however, and you may use Bistro Code to provide hyperlinks to outside documents and images. Yes, as long as you are the author listed on the left.