"Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_%28electronic%29 My interpretation is that spam is obvious to the sender. If it's not that bad it's not spam.[1] --- I think you should try a global list first. You can migrate from a global list to personal lists, but the opposite direction can make some small minority of vocal users unhappy once they've gotten used to it. So you're eliminating a future choice. These things accumulate and over a few years will translate into overly-complex UI (lots of little links next to each story) as the site tries to cater to the needs of lots of little minorities. I like trying to eliminate the 'all posts' page. [1] I've thought about this in the past: http://akkartik.name/blog/2010-08-13-16-01-21-soc I was also fascinated to learn that spam was originally derived from 'spiced ham'. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/omput/insanely_ob...