Hawkwind describes the "justice system" of IRC in his forward. It seems to me that the kick/ban process on IRC is a good example of how not to moderate a forum. Many people on IRC seem to be there for no other purpose than to enjoy the testosterone high of being op. They go to a lot of trouble to write bots which keep their channels open and op them when they join. They take great pleasure in kicking people. There is often a little clique which runs a channel, and whenever one of those people joins, someone else ops him. Have you ever been on a channel where nobody was saying anything, but people were constantly opping, de-opping, kicking, banning, unbanning, coming back in and flooding the channel before being kicked again, etc...? I don't use IRC that much, but from what I've seen, that system doesn't work very well. An extropians-style kill command would probably be better for IRC or the list. If someone is causing trouble, you could just set to ignore them.