Ballew Kinnaman answers this pretty well - > so... why isn't there a command i can issue which > would delete everything sent to the list from that address? My guess is that you probably could write an editor macro or perl script that would do it: it would be complicated, but not difficult. The real problem is this: > The whole idea of mailing list archives is to preserve > what is said, not make the logs into personal swiss > cheese at the whim of any random participant. > > My welcome messages make it clear that, if you speak > (write) to the group, that message is before the group, > permanently, as part of the archive. This is a good idea; it's also a good idea to refuse to go through the hassle of poking holes in archives on people's whims. I had one case where a woman was pretty sure her husband was going to lose his job if I left a posting public, and I finally was persuaded, in that case, to hold the list and kill the posting. But even then, as I pointed out to her, Pandora was well and truly out of the box: 750 people had read the message, and some of them had certainly saved it. -- Russ St. Thomas University http://www.stu.ca/~hunt/