I find it interesting, and a little distressing, that there seems to be a "groupthink" phenomenon on this list (and also sometimes on Wikipedia itself). I saw it just now in the discussion of an expulsion from this list. When it was first brought up for comment, there was a "me-too" chorus of agreement with the ban. Then, a day later, I posted my dissenting commentary (which I actually wrote yesterday, but failed to successfully post due to a misconfigured mail program... getting outbound mail sent while on vacation and using various different access providers is a pain with all the security moves and port blocking tossing up hoops to be navigated), and suddenly there were several other dissenting views following in close succession. One can make all sorts of hypotheses to try to explain such things; perhaps people are timid about expressing their opinion unless somebody else has already broken the ice in their direction; perhaps people of firm convictions prefer to be quiet about them unless they're sure they have other supporters around so they won't be left to twist in the wind alone; perhaps people without convictions of their own are eager to find bandwagons to jump on so they'll take up a view that just happens to agree with whoever else posted last. Whichever it may be (or a combination of these and other factors), it doesn't seem like the healthiest thing for honest discussion of views (even if sometimes the outcome might wind up agreeing with my own view). I know that an atmosphere (which several prominent people seem to be promoting) where people are in fear of being blocked or banned for their expression of views is one highly conducive to such groupthink, where people will either adopt (or pretend to adopt) whatever they see as the dominant view, or else shut up and decline to state a view at all. Dan Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/ Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/ Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/