At 2:33 PM 9/18/96, 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.

No, it certainly does not make you a "censor." It makes you more _discriminating_, but this is often a good thing. A _censor_, by all standard definitions one can find, is one who restricts what _others_ may read. The form that concerns many of us the most is when a government uses its monopoly on force to censor. (But the term can also apply to when churches or corporations act as censors of what worshipper-units or employee-units may read or view.) I hope by "has me reexamining things" you do not mean that your experience with filters means support for government telling us all which filters we must use. Certainly the CP list is undergoing one of its periodic "sunspot cycles," where spambots and loonies are attempting to trash it, and where the discussions of meaty issues are being affected. We've survived half a dozen or so such periods, and will survive this. The best way to increase the S/N ratio is to post more signal. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."