One issue is the purpose of the ratings system. I don't think it will help to solve the problem of intentional disruption. If the disrupter is really motivated, he could have multiple identities and give positive ratings to his messages, so they would get through. I think a good purpose would be filtering out uninteresting or lower-quality messages. Unless someone else vouches for a message, it would not appear for a subscriber to the filtered list. Eric asked that discussions on this topic use the "subject tag" concept, putting "RATINGS:" in the subject line. Subject tags are a good idea but are not widely used. If more people would use them it would help people to read those messages that interest them. My suggestion is that the ratings be based on subject tags. A rater reads a message, and if he endorses it as being worth reading he sends in one or more subject tags (keywords) which apply. Then someone on the filtered list could subscribe based on particular tags that interest them. The advantage is that this way even newcomers' messages are tagged with useful keywords, tags provided by old-timers on the list when they approve the messages. This also provides for the multi-dimensional aspect of approval, more useful than a simple "thumbs up". I won't try to suggest a syntax, but under this proposal a rating message would include some message identifier (perhaps the list should produce messages with an incrementing message number), along with a list of applicable subject tags. Hal