In article 422310E3.15508.2711EC@localhost,
(Jim Lewis) wrote:

On 28 Feb 2005 at 10:53, Beckenbach, Jay wrote:

First, we as individual users of the list (either directly or through
the digest) control what is in the archives. If we ignore the spam
then it takes very little space in the archives and could be edited
out if necessary

Well, it is possible to edit out individual messages, but it is a
tedious and VERY complicated process, and one that the slightest error
can (and will) mess up the entire archive indexing scheme.

As former list manager, I would not recommend it to Shelly.
[snip]

Do you mean "edit out" as in changing the contents of a message in the
mailing list archives, or removing the message from the archives entirely?
I've seen a few web forums that do the former because it's a lot easier;
they just change it to something like "[obvious trolling removed by admin]".