I really don't see  the point in having this discussion.  On the one hand
it is clear  that there are cases where anonymous  postings are desirable
(socio-psychological studies lists  with topics such as rape  or incest -
and don't you tell me that people  who have been raped by their father at
13 should have  the courage of speaking  up under their own  name or shut
up). You may not want (or have time) to moderate a list just because some
of the topics are  sensitive. So one cannot go to the  people who run the
anonymous servers  and tell them  they are  doing something evil  with no
value to the serious  users out there. And, of course, in  the same way I
am not responsible for the contents of messages transiting through SEARN,
the people who run these servers  are not responsible for the contents of
the anonymous messages. They might accept to ban a particularly offensive
user, but they certainly can't control or  police what is being said on a
regular basis.
 
So the issue rests with the anonymous  alias servers. Some will be run by
reasonable people  who will  be open to  reasonable suggestions,  such as
putting some  field in the header  that one could filter  on if anonymous
messages are not wanted on a  particular list. But the Internet being the
anarchy that it  is, there is absolutely no way  you will prevent abusive
people from  posting anonymously. I  would be extremely surprised  if the
anonymous alias server was not available  via anonymous FTP for anyone to
run on  his clickstation  as he sees  fit. It is  a trivial  operation to
delete  a line  to  remove  any identification  the  software might  have
originally added, or to change the  pattern of the usernames. The day you
have 200 such servers running here and there, there will be absolutely no
way you can maintain a working list  of all the sites to filter, nor will
you be able to  get the unauthorized ones to shut down -  in the 2-3 days
it will  take for  your mail to  the site postmaster  to be  answered and
acted upon, 5 new  servers will have been opened and  2 will have closed.
This is simply a lost battle.
 
  Eric