Sandy writes:
Sounds fair enough to me. What do you think?
I think temporarily moderating c-punks is a good idea. It could be that, if we are indeed the target of a cancelable attack on usenet, all this garbage could go away after a while (he said, wishfully). However, I think our current problems are more a function of the size of the list itself. So, if, in fact, the crap *doesn't* abate over time, it wouldn't be the end of the world if the more abusive behavior here were removed mechanically -- before it went out to almost 2,000 people. Thus, I don't think that moderating the garbage out of cypherpunks is the functional equivalent of a neuticle installation. :-). Measuring the effectiveness of this exercise, with the ability to peek ocassionally into Sandy's sludge pile, keeps the whole thing honest. Frankly, if we could figure out a way for Sandy to easily split the feed into "cypherpunks" and "trash", that would be the best *permanent* solution. Unfortunately, the physical mechanics of list moderation will probably swamp poor Sandy as it is, much less the permanent addition of forwarding the dreck somewhere else at the same time. I hope he understands that he's about to take a shower with a firehose. For instance, it's work enough mechanically for me to filter out the good 40% of cypherpunks, and the 10% average of the 30 or so other lists I follow on a daily basis for e$pam. If I were also responsible for sending the relevant contents of my trash folder to another feed, it would probably be too much to mess with, because I've got other stuff in there besides email list noise. Of course, having an intellegent moderator of cypherpunks also cuts down on the value of e$pam itself... Hmmm... Heavy sigh. ;-). Oh, well, it's all in the cause of a good signal... Go for it, Sandy, and good luck! Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox, e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "The cost of anything is the foregone alternative" -- Walter Johnson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/ FC97: Anguilla, anyone? http://offshore.com.ai/fc97/