Michael Snow wrote: One problem with open and unmoderated mailing lists is that the preferred way to respond to stupid messages or insults is with silence. If everybody who disliked the message would protest, like Michael did here, the list would be flooded. And if any single person protests against every stupid message, that person might end up dominating the list, like someone who doesn't know how to moderate themselves. (Like those who argue about Wikipedias in certain languages that begin with M.) Open mailing lists offer no good way to express sympathy with a protest. Instead there is a strong incentive for sensible list members not to protest against offensive messages. And the offended person has no real way to distinguish this from agreement with the offense or from cowardice. If this list is a kitchen, everybody just cares for their own cup, and nobody cleans the room. If this was instead a wiki talk page, the offending message could be removed and most of the harm would be undone. If one person removes the offense, other readers agree by just doing nothing. No, I don't suggest we replace all mailing lists with wiki discussions. I only mention this as an inherent difference (a bias) between open mailing lists and other technical solutions. A moderator (kitchen cleaner?) could throw the offender off the list, but this is an open list. This could be the strongest argument for keeping the wikichix list closed (membership moderated). -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se