Pointers to news sources and other mailing lists
I've noticed that about 90% of traffic to the Cypherpunks list, at least the slightly-filtered list at lne.com, is now one-line pointers to news on Yahoo, CNN, ABC, LA Times, and to articles on Slashdot, Politech, Extropians, Cryptography, and other such Net outlets. If I wanted to subscribed to Perrypunks, I'd do so. If I wanted to subscribe to Declanpunks, I'd do so. (In fact, I subscribe to one of Declan's lists, the Nym list. Alas, it seems to be mostly forwarded news items and pointers.) If I wanted to subscribe to Gaylorpunks, I'd do so. And I already see more Yahoo, ZDNet, CNET, and similar headlines and stories than the NSA has bits. Having dozens of other lists is all well and good, but there is no point in bouncing their stuff around. There are exceptions, as when some particularly urgent or clueful point is made. And even then it is best for the forwarder to at least take a few minutes to introduce the post and to comment on it. This shows that he's not just dumping pointers. (And when one of my articles is "helpfully forwarded" to one of these other of the dozens of such lists, I tend to get strange personal mail from people asking me what it is I'm talking about. Sometimes I bounce them info on subscribing to the Cypherpunks list, sometimes I just give them a couple of lines of explanation. And often I don't reply at all. I think most of the "pointers" are just symptoms of laziness. It looks like people just think "cross-pollinating" without analysis is the thing to do. My solution is to add more and more of you who do this to my filter files. When the average list traffic, minus advertising, spam, pointers to Yahoo, forwarded Politech items, etc. drops to less than 3 per day, then I can finally unsubscribe completely. --Tim May P.S. The worst situation is when N different lists are copied, many of them open for posting only to subscribers. Nothing worse than having an e-mail conversation spanning N different lists. -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Maybe we should form cypherarticles@lne.com ? cypherlinks@lne.com? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tim May" <tcmay@got.net> To: <cypherpunks@lne.com> Sent: Monday, July 30, 2001 10:28 AM Subject: Pointers to news sources and other mailing lists
I've noticed that about 90% of traffic to the Cypherpunks list, at least the slightly-filtered list at lne.com, is now one-line pointers to news on Yahoo, CNN, ABC, LA Times, and to articles on Slashdot, Politech, Extropians, Cryptography, and other such Net outlets.
If I wanted to subscribed to Perrypunks, I'd do so. If I wanted to subscribe to Declanpunks, I'd do so. (In fact, I subscribe to one of Declan's lists, the Nym list. Alas, it seems to be mostly forwarded news items and pointers.) If I wanted to subscribe to Gaylorpunks, I'd do so. And I already see more Yahoo, ZDNet, CNET, and similar headlines and stories than the NSA has bits. Having dozens of other lists is all well and good, but there is no point in bouncing their stuff around. There are exceptions, as when some particularly urgent or clueful point is made. And even then it is best for the forwarder to at least take a few minutes to introduce the post and to comment on it. This shows that he's not just dumping pointers.
(And when one of my articles is "helpfully forwarded" to one of these other of the dozens of such lists, I tend to get strange personal mail from people asking me what it is I'm talking about. Sometimes I bounce them info on subscribing to the Cypherpunks list, sometimes I just give them a couple of lines of explanation. And often I don't reply at all.
I think most of the "pointers" are just symptoms of laziness. It looks like people just think "cross-pollinating" without analysis is the thing to do.
My solution is to add more and more of you who do this to my filter files.
When the average list traffic, minus advertising, spam, pointers to Yahoo, forwarded Politech items, etc. drops to less than 3 per day, then I can finally unsubscribe completely.
--Tim May
P.S. The worst situation is when N different lists are copied, many of them open for posting only to subscribers. Nothing worse than having an e-mail conversation spanning N different lists.
-- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
On Mon, 30 Jul 2001, Tim May wrote:
I think most of the "pointers" are just symptoms of laziness. It looks like people just think "cross-pollinating" without analysis is the thing to do.
Some of the pointers are also symptoms of a bad connectivity. I've got only a very lagged ssh link at *work*, zero connection at home. I think there's definitely value in a dedicated cpunx news sink (Choategrams included), so if you have no objections, I'll go ahead, and make one at yahoogroups. Unless any of you people already run such a newsticker? No point in reinventing the wheel.
My solution is to add more and more of you who do this to my filter files.
-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204/">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBMTO : N48 10'07'' E011 33'53'' http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204 57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3
participants (3)
-
Black Unicorn -
Eugene Leitl -
Tim May