Some thoughts -- 1) I've known Sandy for a couple of years, and I trust him to use good judgement as a moderator. It will be important to develop guidelines so that the job can be rotated, but it's also important that the moderator be someone who doesn't have any major axe to grind. Sandy has his personal likes and dislikes, but I don't think he'll ever stoop to tossing out opinions that he disagrees with. 2) I don't think that a post should be tossed out simply because it contains an ad-hominem attack, but only if it is entirely or almost entirely an ad-hominem attack. (Timmy May sucks cock, or John Gilmore dead of AIDS, or found drowned in his hot tub, or whatever...) I'd hate to see an otherwise substantive post get pitched out because it referred to Dorothy Denning as the Wicked Witch of the East or somesuch. 3) I agree that maintaining the list of posts that are tossed out is important as a check against abuse by the moderator. 4) I think that anyone who confuses the editing of a list with censorship is a complete fool, and should be sentenced to running a free counterculture newspaper in which he or she is compelled to publish whatever fevered ramblings enter the head of the members of the "community" without editing. [This is the voice of experience speaking here -- you don't want to do this.] Freedom of the press belongs to those that own presses. The Internet makes it a lot easier to own a "press", but it doesn't make them grow on trees, nor does it give you any special rights to appropriate someone else's press. (I'm assuming that the peurile lamers -- oops,ad-hominem alert -- who are arguing so strongly against editing the list also believe in property rights, yes?) FWIW, Doug