My two cents worth:

I personally would like to see FlyerTalk start advertising itself as a moderated discussion group. Moderated discussion groups have:

- FAQs which, in addition to providing technical how-tos, describe what kinds of discussion are appropriate and what is off topic

- Administrators whose charge is to tell group members when they are getting off topic and remove their posting privileges if they keep going too far afield.

Those who prefer anarchic discussion are free to start something over on the Usenet. I have found that last couple of weeks on FlyerTalk has taken some of the fun out of it for me.

I would personally prefer to restrict FlyerTalk to members who are willing to publish an e-mail address. Many times it is more appropriate to respond to a post via a one-on-one e-mail than by posting to the whole group, and in this discussion group, we don't always have the possibility of doing so. I don't buy the argument that letting members remain active without providing an e-mail address promotes anonymity; anyone can get a free anonymous e-mail address for use on FlyerTalk at Hotmail or Yahoo if they so desire.

I have been active on CompuServe and the Internet for about 7 years now, and have been both a SysOp on CompuServe and a list administrator of a mailing list. I find the above to be the approach that works best for me.