From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
General insults, or political statements, are of course kosher, but making any kind of snide remarks about Joe Foobar, for example, will often result in these comments being fed to the at person. (I recently made some comments here on this list about a public Net person, whom I do not believe is or was subscribed...a few days later I got a note from this person objecting to my characterization of his views! I am assuming someone forwarded the traffic to him.)
I felt the same way recently. I had commented here about elec cash prodigy Stefan Brands being among those not getting into the DigiCash demo, it got cross-posted to www-buyinfo (which is read by DigiCash people) and led to a big political stink that may have set back relations between Brands and Chaum and therefore the prospects for high-quality digital cash. I really regretted my words as it was certainly not my intention to stir up bad blood. I still tend to think of this list as a relatively private place to make comments "just among friends", unlike more public venues which feed into a wider cross-section of views and where I try to be much more circumspect. Hal