BL> My definition of a twitter is one that removes all the
BL> twitted messages, permanently. That's the whole point... gone!

RS> And its not everyones definition of a twitter.
RS> Like all design issues, its more complex than that.

BG> True, although it is also my definition of what a true twitter should do.

I think its quite the wrong way to do it with a complex twitter that
can say just drop messages from a particular person in a particular
area or drop messages on a particular subject in a particular area.
For example someone who hates OS wars may want to drop messages which
are the shots in an OS war. As soon as you have a complete twit rule
system, you need some safety and not just dump the messages forever,
coz inevitably you will get the twitting rules a bit screwed at times.

RS> IMO if you want a fancy twitter it has to be in the reader, not
RS> the converter. If only coz the fancier it gets the more likely
RS> you are to want to tune it.

BG> I'm unaware of any OLR or native mailer software which
BG> actually removes messages from the database.  Only accessory
BG> apps like WIMM or NetMgr are capable of doing this AFAIK.

Even thats not true. You think of QWK readers and other OLRs as
the common form where they dont have a mail base. Many of them
actually do have a mail base just like a point system does. There is
a whole class of whats generally called database QWK readers alone.

And they normally do have twitters which work on the database.

--- PQWK202