To answer a few questions so far:
An "established" member is simply someone who has posted before. The Vocalist is set so that anyone's very first post has to be approved by me before it goes to the list ("unmoderated list, moderate new members" option in yahoogroups). This is how I catch the porno spam and the like; I simply delete it and throw the sender off the list. Normal messages get approved and then that person can send to the list normally. So voting to ban spam from "non-established" members simply means that someone couldn't sign up and post a commercial post as their first (and usually last) message.
Theoretically, someone could sign up, post a vocal message, and then post some bestiality spam, and it would slip through the cracks; this has yet to happen, though, so as a spam-catching system it works pretty well. There's no way to auto-filter anything with yahoogroups; it's all me. So filtering it into the Files section of the website would be hard to do (unless we set the whole list to manual moderation, which no one wants to do, least of all me).
In the US, ISP service is flat-rate; however, it is my understanding that it's basically impossible to get an unlimited phone rate system in many European countries; you pay per minute of sign-on time to your phone company, and often you pay your ISP for your bandwidth as well. Vocalist has a not-insubstantial wedge of European subscribers, which is why I keep trying to get people to stop quoting an entire digest in their replies, and the like.
Yet another unsavory aspect of yahoogroups is that you must go through the registering hooplah before you can access the website (you can sign up for an email list without registering). If you don't want to do this (which I understand), you can send me your vote via email and I'll tally it in.
Sorry for those who don't like the discussion -- I figured I'd rather get everyone's input before making a decision about list policy (like what kind of soliciting is okay and what kind isn't okay), being the pseudo-democratic list that we are.
Isabelle B.
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