Dissolving Choke Points
I was amused by the similarities of USG crypto policy and the moderation of the cypherpunks list. Recently a number of new regulations were announced to go into effect by a certain date. Requests for comments were made after the policy was announced. Many of us thought that was pretty sneaky. I feel the same way about the moderation plan. Moderation has been a failure. I'm pretty good at filtering and I can sadly report that there is very little signal out there. There are lessons to be learned here. One is that censorship does not promote a stimulating and creative dialogue. The cypherpunks list right now is about as interesting as hanging out by the 7-11. Another lesson is the danger of choke points. We can see how tempting it is for people to exercise their control. Even John Gilmore was unable to restrain himself from involuntary social engineering experiments. Who would we have considered to be more trustworthy? Toad.com is a choke point, not just in terms of moderation but in terms of the rate at which it can distribute messages. Let's replace it. What we want are many machines carrying the cypherpunks list. A message posted to any machine goes to all of the others. Each machine sends messages to its subscribers only once. Some of these machines should be across borders. The mail loop and multiple posting problems are solved by observing the message IDs. Fast implementation: use moderated mailing list software. Put a filter in the .forward file of the "moderator" account which looks at the message ID and forwards the message if it hasn't been seen already. The mailing list machines all subscribe each other. I've been looking for a stable machine with a good net connection to do this. I haven't found one. However, if we have many machines sharing the load, the stability of any one unit is not as important because the list will survive multiple "hits". Only the subscribers on one machine will be affected by having their messages delayed. This greatly reduces the work and responsibility for any one list operator. (As John will attest, keeping a machine running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, rain or shine, is a lot of work.) Also, with multiple machines, each unit handles a small amount of the load. This makes more machines available and has less impact on people's net connections. Last I checked, there were about 1200 addresses on the mailing list at toad.com. All we need are about 10 machines to take 120 subscribers each. (This is a completely manageable load.) Do you have a Unix machine on the Net? Does it have sendmail and Perl? Then you have all that it takes to participate. Send me mail and I'll help you set it up. Peter Hendrickson ph@netcom.com P.S. I like and respect John and Sandy and I've learned a lot from both of them. While basically well-intentioned, they just made a mistake in this instance.
Peter Hendrickson <pdh@best.com> writes:
There are lessons to be learned here. One is that censorship does not promote a stimulating and creative dialogue. The cypherpunks list right now is about as interesting as hanging out by the 7-11.
Censorship adds a social hierarchy, and this is inevitably resented. A similar problem existed with ICS (Internet Chess Servers), they include a MUD like facility where users can discuss chess. For misc reasons certain behaviour was frowned on, and a system of control was added to the software where certain users where given moderator status, and could kick others off. The fact that some of the moderators were particularly poor players helped to annoy others who though outspoken, where good chess players, and led to the particularly long thread in alt.chess (or whatever group it was) titled `guppies rule the goldfish bowl' or something. (A `fish' is a newbie chess player, a guppie being a small fish,...) Interesting repetition of the social phenomena of resentment of power in electronic forums (however well intentioned, and for whatever perceived social good).
Another lesson is the danger of choke points. We can see how tempting it is for people to exercise their control. Even John Gilmore was unable to restrain himself from involuntary social engineering experiments. Who would we have considered to be more trustworthy?
Quite. For a pedigree of championing free speech, and unpaid efforts to further freedom, he was high up on the list. I'd feel happier if he was joining in with these discussions, rather than getting interested to the extent to set up moderation, even though not participating in the discussions.
[distributed list homing ideas]
sounds good. But what about USENET groups? They're distributed, what feature of your proposed solution is superior to using USENET groups distribution mechanisms in your opinion? Several times in the past, a USENET newsgroup alt.cypherpunks was suggested. Some people were against it because they felt that it would attract more noisy posters. Perhaps it is time to reconsider the benefits of alt.cypherpunks. (As an aside, it is ironic that John Gilmore was the guy who started the alt.* USENET hierarchy, specifically to facilitate freedom of speech).
P.S. I like and respect John and Sandy and I've learned a lot from both of them. While basically well-intentioned, they just made a mistake in this instance.
Agree. Also, the quicker they acknowledge their actions as mistakes, and correct the results, the less their reputations will suffer. Perhaps at the end of the trial moderation experiment would be a good time to change position without loosing face. (If acknowledging mistakes bothers them). Adam -- print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
participants (2)
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Adam Back -
Peter Hendrickson