sameer suggests the creation of a new remailer list property, "permanent", to denote a remailer expected by its operator(s) to persist indefinitely. I'm curious about the potential sociological effects of such a move. I imagine that pseudonyms would be attracted to "permanent" remailers for use in their reply chains. But this phenomenon could/should be mitigated by the possibility that sting remailers would tend to advertise themselves as "permanent" (truthfully, even !), in anticipation of the bias in pseudonym remailer chain inclusion. Enemies of anonymity might specially target remailers claiming to be "permanent" for antisocial uses. This is all similar to the effects (observed and supposed) of the existing reliability ratings for remailers. But the sharp contrast of a binary property might make the effects more pronounced. Perhaps it would be useful/meaningful to note the duration (or starting date) of each remailer's term of operation, on the theory that past survival is some indicator of the chances for continued existence. Anyway, I think it would be an interesting experiment to try. -Futplex <futplex@pseudonym.com>