I said:

...

I personally disagree with censorship. It would be impossible to enforce anyway. A move of this type would simply drive Detweiler to use the Cypherpunk remailers which would be harder to detect. Then what do we do? Stop accepting mail from our own remailers?

Eric replied:

Basically, yes, except for signed letters from previously authenticated pseudonyms. This is a simple form of a positive reputation system. A kill fill is a negative reputation--'not that person'. A positive reputation rejects all but a particular set of identities.

I'm sorry, I didn't realize that you wanted to erect a barrier against anonymous newbies, such as "wonderer" and "Dark Unicorn" were recently. You know, Detweiler might get a new account under a new name, better seal the list to only postings from "previously authenticated" accounts too. Then we'd be all happy and safe from the dreaded Detweiler. Don't let this guy screw up the positive aspects of the list. His irritant is the by-product of the free world that we are trying to create. You can't stop his communication without comprimising our own goals. (You can delete it without reading it or kill file him or once we are on extropians list software, ::exclude him.)

Much of the debate on cypherpunks magically incants 'reputation systems' to solve all sorts of sticky problems, but none have ever been implemented in software, except for killfiles, which are not effective against disruption in an anonymous environment.

Necessity is the mother of invention. A motivated individual trying to disrupt a communications forum and who has to avoid a kill file will be necessary to create the need for a positive reputation system. Once the need is there, the software will follow. LD could become the most valuable participant in the endeavor of creating a positive reputation system, namely, the irritant at the center of the pearl.

Let us encapsulate him well.

Eric

I'm not entirely against positive reputation systems, but they really need to be implimented on the user end, or at least be user settings, as on the extropians list. But the main problem with positive reputation systems is dealing with the zero reputation newbies. I don't want to see these guys shut out. Think well, before you act on this impulse. _______________________________________________________________________ Geoff Dale -- insert standard disclaimers here -- plaz@netcom.com "Life is a sexually transmitted terminal disease." - Peter McWilliams