I graduated High School in '88 as well. I wrote a program to do the exact same things on an Apple II+. There was a local bbs where we would share access numbers and pins. I vaguely remember a service called Metrophone? With 10 digit pins, that if you successfully retrieved one, they would work for months. Later, I discovered your app (much more refined than what I had built) and used that. Thank you for the walk down memory lane.

Moving to Tokyo from Los Angeles really changed my perspective on transportation. Here the car is definitely low on the totem pole. It seems like every child here knows how to ride a unicycle by the time they're 9 years old. Old women ride up the hill I live on with bicycles (I'm so out of shape I routinely get beaten home by in-shape 70 year old ladies). And foldable bikes and razors are a common site on the train. In the US most of the cities are built with cars in mind. Cars are definitely king. There's nothing wring with that, as long as an alternative to oil is found. But people do not get enough exercise.

It seems to me that this problem has had a solution which has stood the test of time for millennia. Shunning. Whether it was ancient Babylon or 19th century London the act of shunning someone (for specified periods of time, even life) has achieved the goal of weeding out undesirable individuals from the group. All that is needed in the web world is a point system for members (which you already have). Members which contribute the most have the most points. These people's opinions count the most. If a high point user shuns another user, that shunning counts severely against the shunned. Also if a high point user is shunned the shunning counts less against them. High contributing members may be attacked or maligned at random and sometimes this means the user is actually doing a good job. In other words, the users held in high regard are protected more from random shunnings. When a user hits a predefined threshold of shun points vs. Their esteem points they are shunned by the entire group for a preset period of time and told so. The shunned are always overtly ignored. With each subsequent shunning more time is added until a shun threshold is reached at which point they are excommunicated. The shunned and excommunicated always have at ther disposal the petition system. They may ask for forgiveness (or point out the error of the shunning like "someone stole my account."). The petitions are sent to those that did the shunning and they may decide to not shun them anymore. This process works orit would not still be in use by churches and organizations around the world. Just a thought. Paul