Hi Louise, Who does the list _belong_ to? Are you the owner, or are you running it for an organization? If it is _your_ list, then you have every right to decide how you want to run it. If you are running it for someone else, then yet again, you must enforce _their_ policies. I also run a support group. It belongs to me. I pay for it (well, it's an employee benefit, but I pay for it in the sense that I have to keep working for L-Soft to keep it, and if I ever leave L-Soft [perish the thought!], I will have to start shelling out real $$ to keep it going.) As far as I'm concerned, it's the same as hosting a party. I have every right to ask people to leave my house if I feel that they are mistreating the other guests or scratching up the furniture. Just because you have opened up your list to total strangers -- a "public" list -- does not mean it belongs to the "public". It belongs to you and you are totally justified in running it the way you see fit, and requiring that people be civil to each other when they are in your "home". If they don't like it, they are free to pay for their own list and run it the way they want to. If nobody "talks to you that way anywhere" then there's no reason you should have to put up with it on your list. Indeed, if someone on my list did that, I would delete them, put every one of their known addresses in the header under "Filter=Also,...". My list is set up with Default-Options=Review, and I take new subscribers off of review once I've determined that they are not spammers or trouble makers. (Generally after the first post -- just don't publicize that to the list or the person can get back on by pretending to be nice on the first post). I've only had to do that with one member in the 2 years that I've been running the list. He was civil to me, and mostly civil _on_ the list, but then he would send scathing remarks privately to people who posted, telling them that they were idiots for asking such stupid questions or making such moronic statements. Several people signed off the list before one of them told me about it. I gave him a warning. He persisted, and I kicked him off. Haven't seen him since. I still felt a little bad, because if anyone on the list needed help, he certainly did. But I decided that I personally do not have the resources to help him, and I had to protect the rest of my list. Hopefully, if he gets kicked off enough lists, he might eventually get the professional help he needs so much. I am very determined that NO ONE is going to use MY list for abusing other people, even if it's by collecting addresses to abuse via private emails. If the abusive remark is made in response to a post to the list, even if it's done privately, then it still falls under list guidelines. The point is that you do not want people to be scared to post to the list, and if they are subject to private abuse for posting publicly, then it still falls under the list guidelines. You might want to make that point explicit in the list guidelines. There is no dilemna. You did the right thing. Francoise