The privacy apocalypse is coming. People will stop caring, even more than they already have, and if someone can be elected* after repeatedly breaking campaign promises, then surely past behavior only matters as an excuse, rather than a reason.
* I don't have anyone specific in mind, here; politicians, all of 'em.
Actually that's a nice way of filtering mailing lists nowadays. Posts worth reading and posts signed with the full name are almost the same ones... If you missed something really interesting from other posts, it will most likely be quoted later on anyways.
There was this griefer mythomaniac in the Swedish groups, who sent cancels on others' messages all the time when he couldn't answer (I assume with constructed headers so it wouldn't be removed on your local server).
He also did things like send cancels on people quoting his insulting stuff long afterwards, so they wouldn't show up with his name in Google.
I had read the rfc:s, but couldn't even imagine anyone would be so unserious at the time. Ah, innocence.
I don't know if Google still remove messages when cancels show up on Usenet, but you could try...
Edit: OK, I can't complain about the downvotes; it was a joke but it is arguably immoral to remove information.
(For a group so enthusiastic about version control with a leader who pushed for etherpad's timeline document history, this one vote then lockin feels a bit out of character)
