a possible idea is simply a modification of what ringuette suggested; while i am all for anonymous posting, i believe that they should be marked as such (or at least marked with some sort of alias so that one knows which anonymous poster is which--for example, my actual name is Robert Clark, but my user name on this system is Clark Reynard-- not because I am here illegally, but because the sysadmin of this site (a personal friend) is unable to give me an account here for political reasons). irt the idea of a new usenet, i doubt that a 'new' USEnet is possible; it is so firmly entrenched, by 'tradition' et cetera, that it is very likely that what will exist is merely an improvement and expansion of the existing usenet; however, i believe that alternative means of reading usenet should exist; i have found, since rejoining usenet after a three-year absence, that the signal-to-noise ratio has increased greatly (and who hasn't noticed that?). what is necessary, given the constant increase in broadcast, is a correspondingly great increase in 'broadcatch,' that is, the ability to find the information that you actually wish to have (one man's signal is another man's--or person's-- noise). thus, rather than have kill files, having scanning programs capable of filtering out particular TYPES of data, rather than the poster him- or her-self, will be of far more use than excluding a usenet poster who may very well post a greatly useful file amidst a welter of useless files. thus, some sort of syntax/subject/type of data file scanner (which requires asi--my acronym for artificial semi-intelligence) is necessary to make the usenet actually new, and not merely IMPROVED-- usenet improves constantly. if anyone wishes to comment regarding this, rather than clutter the list with more articles like this, send them to me, either here, or to rclark@nyx.cs.du.edu, and i will summarize and post. fc