From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) The longterm solution is to use "positive reputations" and not just "negative reputations" (as in Kill files). This is something Dean Tribble just talked about at our last physical meeting of the Cypherpunks ("Bay Area Branch" :-} ).
Think of like a credit rating. People _earn_ trust, they don't just get assigned a credit rating until they do something bad.
From: pmetzger@shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger) Indeed, in the long run, when there are billions of people in the nets, even UseNet newsgroups devoted to people who use musical instruments as sex toys would have thousands of posts a day because given billions of possible subscribers, finding a few tens of thousands with a particularly obscure interest wouldn't be hard. Thus, in the long run, the nets will move to "closed" newsgroups and mailing lists in which to be a subscriber one will have to be explicitly subscribed to a list and will only be able to read with one's private key and post by digitally signing messages. In such an environment, anonymous abusers will simply be incapable of annoying people.
Yes, but there will still need to be a way for new people to join the lists, (and the net in general) before they've had a chance to "prove themselves." Allowing all new id's to post to the whole group on a probationary basis is unacceptable; as soon as someone proves obnoxious enough to kick off they could just start over with a new id. The obvious answer is that a moderator will be necessary for all closed lists that require a positive rep for posting and that don't wish to be forever limited to their founding members. After a few lucid posts passed by the moderator, an individual would gain enough of a reputation not to be filtered out any longer. Of course, anyone who's heard Howard Stern fans invade political call-in shows will realize there's not much that can be done with those weird people who will spend a lot of time and energy to appear credible, only to annoy people. Joe