Rand Simberg wrote:

On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 02:23:51 GMT, in a place far, far away, Michael
Walsh made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

A killfile is a file that contains subjects, or people, whose posts
are automatically deleted without reading. How you do it depends on
what kind of software you're using to read Usenet. Some Usenet agents
don't have such a facility, but any good one does by definition.

I will note that a killfile doesn't eliminate the message for the rest of
the world, it merely means that if you have someone in the file you
won't even have to see his message come up on your machine.

Basically it protects you from yourself.

No, it protects you from idiots who post on Usenet.

These idiots can't get to you unless you get curious and read
their posts.

My point was that "killfiling" someone does not censor another party,
it just keeps the person who set up the killfile from seeing the post.

I have read posts from rather clueless people who got into a rage
about people killfiling them and claimed it was censorship.

Mike Walsh