Filtering the dotsam and netsam on the Web

I have tuned into the Royal Society's Web Science twitterstream today (#rswebsci) as I am at my workplace, and it was trotting along at a nice pace when (Sir) Tim Berners-Lee twts:

flotsam and jetsam, on the web - dotsam and netsam first time I'd heard it #rswebsci

Cue a retweet orgyspasm as everyone retwts said Tim-thing, totally drowning the #rswebsci column and then my "general" column as more people pick it up and RT. As one grumpy person (not me, oddly enough) then wrote:

{ give us a break } Why retweet someone who has 29k + followers? Ersatz spam #rswebsci

It is, indeed, ersatz spam (I retwt'd that comment though)

Did give me a thought for another function I want in my "Sin Bin" Webfilter though. Why can't Twitter or Tweetdeck or whatever have a function that culls all retweets after the first one into my stream?

(Update - an hour on an the #rswebsci column is still spammed to the gills by retweeters - I think a useul bit of netiquette is if you retweet something cancel the hashtags they've seen it already!!!)

(Update 2 - Article on RWW saying if you haven't seen RT in the hour its over - this was not happening here, it was still going strong 5 hours later. In fact it got worse when Bill Thompson published his blog post so then two RT articles jammed the #tag Twitterstream )