Jim Choate[SMTP:ravage@ssz.com] wrote: That's actually a misrepresentation. What you are proposing is nothing more than more 'freedom for me, not for thee'. Why?
Simply, your argument is,
- It's personaly inconvenient, I want it thusly. - Because it's inconvenient then it should conform (too much ST perhaps?) - So, let's move the 'inconvenience' off on another party so I'm not bothered. - Never mind the effect on them.
It's a bullshit line of reasoning. It's self-absorbed, rude, and socialist (in the sense of coerced monotonic behaviour).
[...]
The only requirement ANY participant in this community or any other should have is to be fair and considerate of others and a willingness to participate in a dialectic. Conformity or consensus are not required (and are really detrimental). Whether a particular post conforms to some 'format' is really a moot point.
This is supposed to be an anarchy, yet the leaders of the 'conformity clique' are supposedly anarchist themselves. How odd...
[I'm posting this to the list since Jim appears to prefer that - most people would rather receive criticism in private, but I'll accede to his wishes here.] Jim: You are confusing two distinct issues: Form and Content. On the Content side, you are essentially correct. I and many others find the beliefs you espouse on physics, law, and mathematics idiosyncratic, peculiar, and often just plain wrong. However, I think we'd all agree that you are free to post them. The list IS an anarchy in that sense. However, as to Form, you're mistaken. Cypherpunks is NOT an anarchy - it's a forum for communication. 'Communication' shares roots with 'Common' and 'Community' . More than one party is involved. For effective communication to occur, certain agreed (often tacitly or by default) protocols and standards are adhered to by the parties (note the plural) wishing to communicate. This is where you are failing ('What we have here is a failure to communicate' :-) To be specific, your methods of citation of outside sources are both burdensome and ineffective. Consider a very recent example. This morning, you posted an note titled: 'CDR: IP & copyright - Somebody with a clue? The message consisted of: 1. 4 lines of message: The original article is over on /.. Apparently Baen Books is willing to put their wallet where there mouth is to prove that the current IP argument is doomed. It will be an interesting experiment. ...which would have been greatly improved by the sentence: "Baen is putting some of its books on the net for (cheap) downloads." 2. A one line URL (a useful one, BTW). 3. 12 lines of sigfile, including a non-working hostname (www.ssz.com). 4. An attached HTML page, which does nothing but put up a screen saying 'Baen Free LIbrary', along with a broken image link. Jim: Can you explain why you did this? It adds zero, zip, nada to the usefullness of your post, contains no link, and takes up space. Don't you check your messages before you send them? This is (a) ineffective, since you don't tell us *what* Baen is doing which is interesting, and (b) burdensome, since you tagged on a totally useless attachment. You tagged it on to every single copy received by list members. A couple questions: 1. If by expending one minute of your own time, you can save *each* of your (several hundred) recipients a minute of their's, is this an unreasonable burden to ask of you? You're asking hundreds of people to consider your posting - isn't it reasonable for you to make it easy for them to do so?[1] 2. You say:
The only requirement ANY participant in this community or any other should have is to be fair and considerate of others and a willingness to participate in a dialectic. Conformity or consensus are not required (and are really detrimental). Whether a particular post conforms to some 'format' is really a moot point.
Are you being 'fair and considerate of others' when you burden every single one of your recipients, to the extent of proposing that they use search engines to puzzle out to what you refer because you were too lazy to obtain a durable URL? I'm not asking you to conform in your beliefs and positions. Others may criticize you there, but I don't think I have (crankish as I may consider them). I am asking that you show 'a willingness to participate in a dialog' by communicating in the common manner. To do this, the 'format' is far from moot. If you posted entirely in uuencoded PDF files, MIME-encoded AVI's of your interpretative dances, or in Latin, your posts would go unread. To be read, considered, and appreciated - isn't that what you want? To reach those goals, it's not good to post in such a way as to suggest either contempt for your audience's needs, or technical incompetence on your own part. Peter Trei PS: You *have* been improving. You no longer post kilobytes of included material. This is greatly appreciated. ----------------------------- Footnote: [1] For non-clued readers, Choate's reference to 'ST' probably points to Star Trek and a quote from the show: 'The needs fo the many outweigh the needs of the few'.]