Cypher version of Gresham's Law: bad posts drive out good posts.
(The same is being seen in talk.politics.crypto, with the neverending Sternlight vs. Everybody Else dominating the traffic by a factor of 20-to-1. Detweiler recently reappeared (as tmp@netcom.com) and is back to debating _himself_ and answering his own delusional posts.)
Let's face it: Usenet is inherently broken. ... To fix them problem, then, we either have to either improve the kill files or improve the moderation. ... In the best case, the moderators would consist of all the readers of the newsgroup. ... The mailing list software picks one e-mail address from all of the list receivers, and forwards the post to that e-mail address (keeping the original post on file). ...
You're on the right track here. Moderation doesn't have to be based in censorship. It can be based on advice. Instead of picking random list receivers to moderate, readers should choose their own moderators. As a moderator reads the latest messages on the list, he or she can mark each one as junk or not junk. This causes advice messages to be sent to their subscribers. The subscribers can use mail programs which process the advice and only show messages which have passed. ("If all three of my moderators say a message is junk, then don't read it, otherwise, show me.") Each moderator can operate, in effect, a mini-mailing list. When digital money becomes available, moderators can charge for their services. One problem with mailing lists is that there isn't much feedback. It's very easy to get enthused and post a "me too" message without realizing that nobody wants to read it. If you notice that various moderators are consistently panning your articles, you will learn to do better work. Corruption of moderators is easily managed as every message they comment on is available for inspection. Hard working readers can ignore all advice by the moderators if they like. Real life example: I have wondered for some time about the articles that don't make it into comp.risks. This is a great newsgroup, but one has to be suspicious of its relationship to SRI. Are "radical" articles culled while "sane and reasonable" articles by D. Denning are passed on? It would be reassuring to be able to sift through the rejects. Peter