My opinion is that the list is usually not too badly affected by the occasional weird or offensive post. The thing that really messes us up is the much larger number of posts about those posts. (That would include this thread on moderation and, ironically, this message!) The more we *ignore* that kind of thing, the better off we are. Another good plan is to write to the offending individual directly without cc'ing to the list. That way he or she may receive many more messages about the problematic posting and it won't clutter the list. If you post to the list, then many people will feel like it's been taken care of and they don't need to send a message. When a thread gets hijacked into a battle over netiquette or similar non-Linux issues, we all lose. If one person says annoying things, I can block that person or disregard him, but if 20 people send replies to that person, then I see all their crap and it's harder to deal with it. Mike