cypherpunk listserve usefulness
As much as it shames me, I have recently discovered that by filtering messages from only 2 participants and setting body filters on 3 keywords have remarkably improved the usefulness of this listserve. As much as I do enjoy some of the filtered subject matter, I really feel it is very off subject and makes this listserver useless for the intended task. I guess that makes me a censor and it has me reexamining some things.
Chip Mefford writes:
As much as it shames me, I have recently discovered that by filtering messages from only 2 participants and setting body filters on 3 keywords have remarkably improved the usefulness of this listserve.
Out of curiosity, what are those keywords?
As much as I do enjoy some of the filtered subject matter, I really feel it is very off subject and makes this listserver useless for the intended task.
I guess that makes me a censor and it has me reexamining some things.
No, filtering your mail does NOT make you a censor, unless you're filtering the mail before it is gatewayed to a list or newsgroup where other people read it. And they didn't ask you to do the filtering. Filtering your own mail is akin to choosing which articles in a magazine to read. It's not censorship if you don't read an article; it's the article's author's fault that he didn't make the article interesting enough for you to read. I think that anyone who has to work for a living must filter the cypherpunks list in order to cut out some of the crap. Most people just don't have the time to wade through everything, and filtering some of it out is a good start on upping the S/N ratio. What you consider Signal and Noise however is entirely up to you. -- Eric Murray ericm@lne.com ericm@motorcycle.com http://www.lne.com/ericm PGP keyid:E03F65E5 fingerprint:50 B0 A2 4C 7D 86 FC 03 92 E8 AC E6 7E 27 29 AF
On Wed, 18 Sep 1996, Eric Murray wrote:
No, filtering your mail does NOT make you a censor, unless you're filtering the mail before it is gatewayed to a list or newsgroup where other people read it. And they didn't ask you to do the filtering.
Yep, matter of fact that's what the light versions of cpunx are for. 's matter of fact I happen to run one of them and my subscribers are happier without all the noise and flames here. :) as for me, I don't mind the noise or the flames, I tend to hit the "D" key quite often. :) ( to subscribe to it, send a message to my address with the >SUBJECT< "fcpunx subscribe" or "fcpunx help" for help.)
Filtering your own mail is akin to choosing which articles in a magazine to read. It's not censorship if you don't read an article; it's the article's author's fault that he didn't make the article interesting enough for you to read.
Yep.
I think that anyone who has to work for a living must filter the cypherpunks list in order to cut out some of the crap. Most people just don't have the time to wade through everything, and filtering some of it out is a good start on upping the S/N ratio. What you consider Signal and Noise however is entirely up to you.
Especially since Cypherpunks isn't the only list I subscribe to. I go through about 200-300 messages a day, and 80% of them get delted without a single look. I tend to read the 1st few messages of a topic, and if it's noise, it gets axed. :) ============================================================================= + ^ + | Ray Arachelian |FL| KAOS KERAUNOS KYBERNETOS |==/|\== \|/ |sunder@brainlink.com|UL|__Nothing_is_true,_all_is_permitted!_|=/\|/\= <--+-->| ------------------ |CG|What part of 'Congress shall make no |=\/|\/= /|\ | Just Say "No" to |KA|law abridging the freedom of speech' |==\|/== + v + | Janet Reno & GAK |AK| do you not understand? |======= ===================http://www.brainlink.org/~sunder/========================= ActiveX! ActiveX! Format Hard drive? Just say yes!
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- A million monkeys operating under the pseudonym "Chip Mefford <cmefford@avwashington.com>" typed:
As much as it shames me, I have recently discovered that by filtering messages from only 2 participants and setting body filters on 3 keywords have remarkably improved the usefulness of this listserve.
As much as I do enjoy some of the filtered subject matter, I really feel it is very off subject and makes this listserver useless for the intended task.
I guess that makes me a censor and it has me reexamining some things.
It is very confusing to _me_, Chip, that you are ashamed of this or that it has shaken your beliefs somehow. Is it that you are not aware of the distinction between coercive "silencing of the speaker" censorship and non-coercive "ceasing to list to the speaker" censorship? I would love to know the two names and three subjects. In the spirit of reciprocation, here is a file called "cpunks.filter" I have. I currently process it by hand or with simple tcsh scripts. Actually I don't actually refer to this file very often. - ------- begin included file "cpunks.filter" ------- Authors: Bryce 9 Black Unicorn 7 Duncan Frissell 7 Robert A. Hettinga 7 Lucky Green 7 Sandy Sandfort 7 Hal 7 Perry E. Metzger 7 Tim May 7 John Young 5 llurch 5 Rick Smith 5 Jim Bell 0 Vulis 0 Subjects: DigiCash 9 Ecash 9 Chaum 8 nym 7 Java 5 trust 5 government 0 policy 0 escrow 0 GAK 0 terror 0 freeh 0 clinton 0 whitehouse 0 white house 0 FBI 0 NSA 0 export 0 munition 0 - ------- end included file "cpunks.filter" ------- Regards, Bryce -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i Comment: Auto-signed under Unix with 'BAP' Easy-PGP v1.1b2 iQB1AwUBMkAgBEjbHy8sKZitAQGC+gMAwQI3ltFVB7H3nrL9b6QZkcYX/VqXnAxQ cHA8KKVic4U/BvAKukCkxyIT2yKGSX+wyMiLmJ1eSbH2pa/zLGI1+OX0ySLCQgnF FLuc4H/AeRgm0f7TM2r62u3VnFoAcFlg =bUu/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Wed, 18 Sep 1996, Chip Mefford wrote:
As much as it shames me, I have recently discovered that by filtering messages from only 2 participants and setting body filters on 3 keywords have remarkably improved the usefulness of this listserve.
[snip]
I guess that makes me a censor and it has me reexamining some things.
No, you're not a censor. You are merely determining what *you* choose to read. That's perfectly acceptable - probably a lot of people on this list also filter their messages to some extent. Now, if you tried to force the rest of us to abide by the standards that you set for yourself, then you would be trying to censor us. There is a big difference here. --- Zach Babayco zachb@netcom.com <----- finger for PGP public key http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/4127
Chip Mefford wrote:
As much as it shames me, I have recently discovered that by filtering messages from only 2 participants and setting body filters on 3 keywords have remarkably improved the usefulness of this listserve. As much as I do enjoy some of the filtered subject matter, I really feel it is very off subject and makes this listserver useless for the intended task. I guess that makes me a censor and it has me reexamining some things.
Why not have the filter be more like a sieve, and dump the low-priority stuff into separate containers, then sort them by personal criteria such as message size, frequency of key words, etc.? If you maintain multiple sorts, you can look over the stuff when you have a chance, and mass-dump a series of messages that don't make a cutoff you specify at read-time. Since I write my own utilities, I can mix and match keyword parsers, multiple-indexed text browsing, and so on. Of course, the commercially- available software totally sucks...
participants (6)
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bryce＠digicash.com -
Chip Mefford -
Dale Thorn -
Eric Murray -
Ray Arachelian -
Z.B.