I wrote: Who qualifies whom, based on what info, and to eliminate whom?

Paul mentions organizational qualification methods

Douglas defends the rights of private groups, and anonymity

Yes, I meant that as a pointer to further problems. I did not mean that it is very difficult to find organizational or technical solutions (although in practice, it may very well be), nor was I lashing back at an Orwellian suggestion. (I still get caught in the way email gets read, not that I have much more luck in person :-) Even though there may be technical solutions to "limited access" groups, it is not clear how compatible each of these is with anonymity. And at the same time it will become harder and harder to figure out whether somebody is using hir Real Name or some Assumed Name. The book publishing market surprises people because an author's pseudonym is not obviously a pseudonym. Any "limited access" policy has to address the problem of pseudonyms, and of individuals offering their pseudonym for un-accredited public access. But the problem at hand is not even that... In the case of io.com, and current remailers, the problem is netnews newsgroups that don't like anonymous abuse without really understanding how hard it could be to eliminate it... Netnews, until now, is here to provide open discussion and "publishing" space. The idea of qualification can be implemented via automatic moderation for example, but it has to contend with: 1) votes by the general public, and acceptance by sysadmins who will carry the traffic (although they don't have much of a say about mailing list traffic...) 2) superset groups and cross-posting. If a "qualify"-only newsgroup is created, then a super-set newsgroup could be created that copies everyhting from the "qualified" groups, and adds open traffic. That superset still carries interesting traffic from people who shun administrative overhead. Qualified people who want to pursue the thread they started now read the superset newsgroup. 3) If you publish, and expect email responses, you need to publish your email address. That makes you vulnerable to mail bombing. It does not matter if the newsgroups carries only filtered traffic. And thanks to Owen for posting the description of some of these net.wars. It will take me a while to go through that. pierre. pierre@shell.portal.com