Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
Sandy hit a pothole in the moderation experiment when Mr. Nemesis submitted a posting containing nothing but libelous statements about Sandy's employer. He never anticipated that he wouldn't be able to follow his announced "post it to one list or the other" policy because to do so would make him legally liable (in his opinion; he's a lawyer, I'm not). His gears jammed, and the whole machine came to a halt for a few days. Sandy has agreed to continue moderation through the end of the original 1-month experiment (through Feb 19). And it's a good thing, too, because the "cypherpunks community" had better get off its whining butt in the next ten days, or it will no longer exist. I've come to the conclusion that I'm not willing to host the cypherpunks list any more. It's not the true assholes that brought me to this decision; it's the reaction from the bulk of people on the list: suspicion, flamage, and criticism with every attempt to improve things. I noticed few people volunteering some of their own time, money, or machines to help out. Almost all the suggestions were advice for *other* people to implement: One would have thought that had Sandy and John really been interested in hearing the views of list members, this approach would have eventually won out. a supposedly libertarian and anarchistic group of people has decided that censorship is the right solution to their problems. I'd prefer for the cypherpunks _name_ not be associated with a moderated/censored list. (I mean no insult to either Sandy or John in this, BTW... I simply think that they've gone about this the wrong way. If one is going to advocate free speech, I strongly suggest one learns to deal with one's own greed and one's own need for power first. For those who want it, let someone moderate the list for as long as they care to do it. Approved messages get a "X-sandy-approved" header. ... the vast majority are still shipped out as 'Sender: owner-cypherpunks@toad.com' (and the 'Received' chain as I pointed out in my original post). to me that is piss poor list management. however you slice it, censorship on a freedom of speech list just does not make it and we make fools of ourselves if we think otherwise. Now each of these posters will get their chance to do it "right" -- on their own time and with their own resources. A large fraction of the list seems to think that "freedom of speech" means that everyone is required to listen to everyone else at all times. That there can't be focused, topical conversations in a society that has freedom of speech. I would say the opposite; part of freedom of speech is the freedom to choose to whom we speak and to whom we listen. This is part of what cryptography does: lets us control who can receive our speech, and lets recievers determine who the speaker is. There also seems to be a misunderstanding that freedom of speech requires that people who want to speak already have a place, set up and maintained by someone else, for them to speak in. If someone who's set up a speech-place decides it isn't being used for its intended purpose, then they are a censor, stopping all possibility of conversations. Did you forget that there are millions of other places to speak in cyberspace, millions more in realspace, and that you can personally create more if you don't like any of the ones you know about? To paraphrase Zappa, you wouldn't know censorship if it bit you on the ass. You think you're being censored when you're just being excluded from a forum because what you're saying isn't interesting to that forum. So anyway, I'm tired of it all. I'd much rather focus on getting my crypto work done than babysitting majordomo, tracking down attempts to subscribe the entire US Congress to the list, and debating the seventy or eighty "obvious right ways" to handle the list. This is a "put up or shut up" to the cypherpunks community. Either you list denizens will, among yourselves, put in the energy to build a new home for the list (and run it in whatever way your volunteers want) by Feb 20, or the list will cease to exist on Feb 20. The next ten days of moderated discussion, through the end of the original experiment, will give the community a chance to discuss whether and where it plans to host the list after the experiment is over. My feeling is that the stalkers who have been trying to shut it down (Dimitri, etc) will be out in full force, trying to disrupt the process of finding a new home. It would be very hard to make progress along that line in an unmoderated list. Cypherpunks-unedited readers are welcome to try. Sandy reports that he's changing his criteria for moderation for the remainder of the experiment. It was his idea, and I approve. The criteria now are: * The topics of the list are: cryptography setting up replacements for cypherpunks@toad.com * On-topic, legal, posts will go to the list. * Postings with any hint of legal liability (in Sandy's opinion) will be silently ignored. * Legal but off-topic posts will go to cypherpunks-flames. Sandy will apply these criteria retroactively to the backlog (of about 140 messages), which means that most recent criticisms of the moderation (which don't invove someone volunteering to do things for the list) will go straight to the flames list. If you don't like it, I recommend that you start your own list. Soon. For me it's a sad thing that the community's willingness to pull together has degenerated to the point where I feel better off separating from the list. I hope that others in the community will create one or several alternatives that work better. John Gilmore
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 10:45 AM 2/11/97 -0600, Firebeard wrote:
[...] I've already taken steps, along with Jim Choate, to start a network of majordomos hosting a Cypherpunks mailing list. [...] Our intention is to have a set of majordomos which are intersubscribed to a cypherpunks list on each one, with measures taken to ensure that mail loops don't develop.
I still think you're just rediscovering Usenet technology. Instead of installing Majordomo, why not install INN, pass traffic as newsgroup(s) (if you don't like alt.cypherpunks, you could simply start your own top-level cpunks group(s)), and leave your NNTP port(s) open (or read-only, if you're an evil CIA brain-stealing censor) so that cpunks at large could connect with newsreaders or their own servers and send/rcv newsgroup traffic? Many cpunks could do this (instead of using Majordomo) locally, connecting to each other to achieve wide propagation and low latency. And, if you must, run mail-to-news gateway(s) which send the newsgroup to people who want it as E-mail. Usenet technology does exactly what you're describing: it's a distributed database of messages designed to facilitate each server getting its own copy of every message, and holding it locally for distribution to interested readers. Other people have been kind enough to write, debug, and document the software - all you have to do is install it. This could be running tonight. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 4.5 iQEVAgUBMwDefP37pMWUJFlhAQGg8wf/R/XcPI7UTmiktI0ce0cR0x54O2pTr2ju WRZ3OXNV7X8xOmU8zhvj/Q6Rg0etZRmDfj9wM51mCZuOx6uh94IlFvBTpFnEz8Vg tM3zeWSt/SukyGfxRLkrRYF4GMU5eKEYBYI7p/3q6WioYBk4JI22EeAyr5Cn+1IA icMJhCpfUE6P1YoC+7zPh+Kbp8Ny3tCtry/axsSZfVRsBZr2M33VONe47quC1l5A CBEEllkeSZey6VfAhrBxLOGiD42evx/TYU1yeR2bhcHUcQ0e5MTR8o8eDBoreuXF ntT9vD0Ov0BEhP2j5r6xC6WcFX0iEynxwErC3nNURPE5CPCoRXws/w== =w4Av -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Greg Broiles | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell: gbroiles@netbox.com | http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto. |
John Gilmore writes:
JG> Sandy has agreed to continue moderation through the end of the JG> original 1-month experiment (through Feb 19). And it's a good JG> thing, too, because the "cypherpunks community" had better get off JG> its whining butt in the next ten days, or it will no longer exist. [...] JG> This is a "put up or shut up" to the cypherpunks community. This appears to be as good a time as any to announce that I'm "putting up". I've already taken steps, along with Jim Choate, to start a network of majordomos hosting a Cypherpunks mailing list. I didn't intend to announce this until Jim and I had gotten the first pair of 'domos working properly, but this means that we'll need to speed things up. Our intention is to have a set of majordomos which are intersubscribed to a cypherpunks list on each one, with measures taken to ensure that mail loops don't develop. As the resulting mailing list from each 'domo will be identical, periodically (initially weekly), the subscriber lists of all of the participating majordomos will be compared, with any duplicate subscribers being removed from the 'domo(s) with the longest subscriber list. There will be no filtering done of any mail to the collective list, although anyone interested in providing a filtered list will be welcome to subscribe to the list. Anyone interested in joining the 'domo network with the conditions described (duplicate subscriber checking and no filtering) is welcome. John, I'd appreciate your permission to use your Cypherpunks welcome message as the basis for the welcome message of this new list. Also, while we will make every effort to have this new list available for subscriptions by Feb 20, I'd appreciate it if you could consider making the current list available for a short period longer if we encounter unanticipated difficulties. -- #include <disclaimer.h> /* Sten Drescher */ ObCDABait: For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses. [Eze 23:20] ObFelony: President Clinton, you suck, and those boys died! Unsolicited bulk email will be stored and handled for a US$500/KB fee.
I wish people would give subject fields which stand out to posts of significant interest, other wise they tend to get lost in the noise. (I have corrected this :-) Sten Drescher <stend@sten.tivoli.com> writes:
John Gilmore writes:
JG> Sandy has agreed to continue moderation through the end of the JG> original 1-month experiment (through Feb 19). And it's a good JG> thing, too, because the "cypherpunks community" had better get off JG> its whining butt in the next ten days, or it will no longer exist.
[...]
JG> This is a "put up or shut up" to the cypherpunks community.
This appears to be as good a time as any to announce that I'm "putting up". I've already taken steps, along with Jim Choate, to start a network of majordomos hosting a Cypherpunks mailing list. I didn't intend to announce this until Jim and I had gotten the first pair of 'domos working properly, but this means that we'll need to speed things up. Our intention is to have a set of majordomos which are intersubscribed to a cypherpunks list on each one, with measures taken to ensure that mail loops don't develop.
John, I'd appreciate your permission to use your Cypherpunks welcome message as the basis for the welcome message of this new list. Also, while we will make every effort to have this new list available for subscriptions by Feb 20, I'd appreciate it if you could consider making the current list available for a short period longer if we encounter unanticipated difficulties.
First, thanks for your efforts! (I had just spent a couple of hours putting together a web page, and collecting information to organise something, but you beat me to it.) As I have spent some time on it, I'll contribute what I had planned: As a stop gap measure you could create a standard majordomo at the beefiest of your 'domo hosts. Or you could create a quick 'n dirty mail exploder, by taking the current subscribers, and putting 100 mail addresses in a .forward file at each <mail-exploder@domo.host>, and having the central 'domo with an initial subscription list all the mail-exploders, plus all those who subscribe afterwards. Buys use some time to get to iron out the wrinkles in the distributed list scheme. As a simpler alternative to the mutually subscribed majordomo's you might consider using mail-exploders for the final solution: set up mail exploders which soley forward posts to subscribers (ie do not accept posts). The mail-exploder would be an appropriately configured/modified majordomo itself. Have a central majordomo which accepts incoming posts, and forwards them to the mail-exploders. The central 'domo would also forward subscribe/unsubscribe to a random/the correct(or all) majordomos. Final comment: perhaps you've investigated this, but what Perry Metzger has for the majordomo running cryptography@c2.net is excellent at stopping people forging subscribe and unsubscribe messages. The output looks like this: : To: A.Back@exeter.ac.uk : From: Majordomo@c2.net : Subject: Confirmation for subscribe cryptography : : Someone (possibly you) has requested that your email address be added : to or deleted from the mailing list "cryptography@c2.net". : : If you really want this action to be taken, please send the following : commands (exactly as shown) back to "Majordomo@c2.net": : : auth abcd1234 subscribe cryptography A.Back@exeter.ac.uk : : If you do not want to this action taken, just ignore this message and : no action will be taken. And would really cut down the nuisance of people subscribing others without their knowledge. Once, again thanks muchly for your's and Jim Ravage's efforts, 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`
i have already set up majordomo@algebra.com and cypherpunks@algebra.com and can join. igor Firebeard wrote:
John Gilmore writes:
JG> Sandy has agreed to continue moderation through the end of the JG> original 1-month experiment (through Feb 19). And it's a good JG> thing, too, because the "cypherpunks community" had better get off JG> its whining butt in the next ten days, or it will no longer exist.
[...]
JG> This is a "put up or shut up" to the cypherpunks community.
This appears to be as good a time as any to announce that I'm "putting up". I've already taken steps, along with Jim Choate, to start a network of majordomos hosting a Cypherpunks mailing list. I didn't intend to announce this until Jim and I had gotten the first pair of 'domos working properly, but this means that we'll need to speed things up. Our intention is to have a set of majordomos which are intersubscribed to a cypherpunks list on each one, with measures taken to ensure that mail loops don't develop. As the resulting mailing list from each 'domo will be identical, periodically (initially weekly), the subscriber lists of all of the participating majordomos will be compared, with any duplicate subscribers being removed from the 'domo(s) with the longest subscriber list. There will be no filtering done of any mail to the collective list, although anyone interested in providing a filtered list will be welcome to subscribe to the list. Anyone interested in joining the 'domo network with the conditions described (duplicate subscriber checking and no filtering) is welcome.
John, I'd appreciate your permission to use your Cypherpunks welcome message as the basis for the welcome message of this new list. Also, while we will make every effort to have this new list available for subscriptions by Feb 20, I'd appreciate it if you could consider making the current list available for a short period longer if we encounter unanticipated difficulties.
-- #include <disclaimer.h> /* Sten Drescher */ ObCDABait: For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses. [Eze 23:20] ObFelony: President Clinton, you suck, and those boys died! Unsolicited bulk email will be stored and handled for a US$500/KB fee.
- Igor.
John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com> writes:
Sandy hit a pothole in the moderation experiment when Mr. Nemesis submitted a posting containing nothing but libelous statements about Sandy's employer. He never anticipated that he wouldn't be able to follow his announced "post it to one list or the other" policy because to do so would make him legally liable (in his opinion; he's a lawyer, I'm not). His gears jammed, and the whole machine came to a halt for a few days.
A person who has a fiduciary responsiblity to act in the best interests of some corporate entity should not be moderating a mailing list where said entity and its various products might be discussed. This is called "conflict of interest." Your eagerness to leap into moderated mode by fiat would better have been preceeded by one or two clues. But then, if you were a particularly clueful person, you would not have made a fool of yourself by forcibly unsuscriving Dr. Vulis in the first place, and precipitating the chain of events that resulted in the current meltdown.
Sandy has agreed to continue moderation through the end of the original 1-month experiment (through Feb 19). And it's a good thing, too, because the "cypherpunks community" had better get off its whining butt in the next ten days, or it will no longer exist.
Ten days notice to relocate a high volume mailing list is insufficient. This is yet another ultimatum by a whining coward who does not yet realize he is in a battle he is not going to win by escalation of reciprocal pissing.
I've come to the conclusion that I'm not willing to host the cypherpunks list any more.
And we've all come to the conclusion that you are a flaming prat prone to irate temper tantrums. Big surprise. You know, I've always been a big non-fan of John Gilmore. I know you're the co-founder of the EFF and the alt Usenet hierarchy, and a well-known and respected mouthpiece on the topics of communications policy, censorship, privacy, and free speech in certain circles. But almost every single piece of private communication I've seen from you has given me the impression that you are an arrogant self-centered nasty little excuse for a man, unwilling to listen to any opinion that doesn't agree with your own, and quite willing to heap any amount of ridicule and derision on dissenters, while trying at the same time to blame them for your behavior. In short, a person I would avoid like the plague in real life, and tolerate only rarely through the insulation of an IP connection.
A large fraction of the list seems to think that "freedom of speech" means that everyone is required to listen to everyone else at all times. That there can't be focused, topical conversations in a society that has freedom of speech.
Speak for yourself, John. You obviously have no idea what or who "Cypherpunks" are, and you are the last person on the face of the earth who should be making proclamations about what "a large fraction of the list" thinks.
There also seems to be a misunderstanding that freedom of speech requires that people who want to speak already have a place, set up and maintained by someone else, for them to speak in. If someone who's set up a speech-place decides it isn't being used for its intended purpose, then they are a censor, stopping all possibility of conversations.
There is a fundamental difference between choosing not to provide a forum for someone to speak in, and in providing a forum for a long period of time and then deciding one day to kick the podium out from under the speaker in mid-sentence, or to edit the speakers comments before distributing them.
Either you list denizens will, among yourselves, put in the energy to build a new home for the list (and run it in whatever way your volunteers want) by Feb 20, or the list will cease to exist on Feb 20.
Gilmore the little dictator speaks again.
Sandy reports that he's changing his criteria for moderation for the remainder of the experiment. It was his idea, and I approve. The criteria now are:
Another sudden change in the topic of the list by fiat with no discussion possible. You should be ashamed of yourself for even attaching the name "Cypherpunks" to this travesty of yours. Why not change the name to GilmorePunks, CocksuckerPunks, ToadyPunks, or something more descriptive?
For me it's a sad thing that the community's willingness to pull together has degenerated to the point where I feel better off separating from the list. I hope that others in the community will create one or several alternatives that work better.
Piffle.
John ["Cocksucker"] Gilmore
Your reputation capital is into the negative numbers now. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd@netcom.com $ via Finger. $
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- mpd@netcom.com (Mike Duvos) writes:
John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com> writes:
Sandy has agreed to continue moderation through the end of the original 1-month experiment (through Feb 19). And it's a good thing, too, because the "cypherpunks community" had better get off its whining butt in the next ten days, or it will no longer exist.
Ten days notice to relocate a high volume mailing list is insufficient. This is yet another ultimatum by a whining coward who does not yet realize he is in a battle he is not going to win by escalation of reciprocal pissing. <big, disgusted, snip>
You know, I was vaugley offended by John's comments about whiny cypherpunks, until I read this message and realized who he was talking about. John, thank you for your years of service to the cypherpunk community 9such as it is), and Sandy, thanks for your well-intentioned (but doomed from day one) efforts to take some resopnsibility for our current mess. It's too bad things had to end in such a pissy way, but anyone who wants to dole out blame should realize that in an anarchy, all members are responsible for the maintainence of freedom. Jer "standing on top of the world/ never knew how you never could/ never knew why you never could live/ innocent life that everyone did" -Wormhole -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBMwEAm8kz/YzIV3P5AQHEagL8Co832vJ75u3U0zfEYp8ixZ1yGM1sx4jQ Aybf55rSeeCUVIOpxgWL03NHEm2+5l9eIAg6qxbne4UZpURu79suMJGe1i5p8ekT UIJsRRZTpq6OVr9w86uJHl3HDvaM9CnK =SeWH -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
A Gilmore Supporter writes:
You know, I was vaugley offended by John's comments about whiny cypherpunks, until I read this message and realized who he was talking about. John, thank you for your years of service to the cypherpunk community 9such as it is),
John Gilmore's only contribution to Cypherpunks has been to provide a box. I can't even remember the last time he contributed something of interest to the list, and he certainly ranks as one of the least frequent contributors of substance over the years. Any goodwill John might have built up by letting us all use his box has certainly been eradicated over the last few weeks by his takeover of the list, and the series of edicts which followed. Yes, it was nice of John to donate the use of his box, back in the days when he did not feel the urge to exercise unilateral editorial control. But if it hadn't been his box, it would have been someone elses box, and our gratitude towards him shouldn't be so great that we are willing to sit back and let him do major damage to that which "Cypherpunks" is supposed to stand for, lest someone claim we are unappreciative.
and Sandy, thanks for your well-intentioned (but doomed from day one) efforts to take some resopnsibility for our current mess. It's too bad things had to end in such a pissy way, but anyone who wants to dole out blame should realize that in an anarchy, all members are responsible for the maintainence of freedom.
Sandy, unlike Herr Gilmore, has been a major contributor of substance to the list since its inception, and hopefully he will continue to be in the future. The idea that he should moderate the list was of course a silly one, but for reasons which do not reflect badly on him in the least. What Mr. Blatz fails to realize is that the "problem" which certain people tried to solve never really existed. The quality of the Cypherpunks list is determined solely by the amount of signal, not by the amount of noise, unless one is getting ones feed of the list via 1200 baud long distance UUCP. Anyone can create signal by writing about relevant topics, and if you feel signal is lacking in your particular area of interest, feel free to add some. The notion that the list was ever threatened by the humour of Dr. Vulis, or the one line bot-spammed insults about Tim May's heritage, is an absurd one. No one should have had any problem ignoring such material, and only a politically naive fool would buy this as the excuse for the blatant usurpation of the list by Gilmore and crew. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Eric Cordian <emc@wire.insync.net> writes:
A Gilmore Supporter writes:
You know, I was vaugley offended by John's comments about whiny cypherpunks, until I read this message and realized who he was talking about. John, thank you for your years of service to the cypherpunk community 9such as it is),
John Gilmore's only contribution to Cypherpunks has been to provide a box. I can't even remember the last time he contributed something of interest to the list, and he certainly ranks as one of the least frequent contributors of substance over the years.
You have obviously never administered a Unix system. Just runing a machine with a few users requires some effort, I've done it. Managing a mailing list, especially one this immensly huge, has got to be one of the bitchliest things on earth. If you think running a majordomo for cypherpunks is just a matter of "providing a box," why don't you try it?
and Sandy, thanks for your well-intentioned (but doomed from day one) efforts to take some resopnsibility for our current mess. It's too bad things had to end in such a pissy way, but anyone who wants to dole out blame should realize that in an anarchy, all members are responsible for the maintainence of freedom.
Sandy, unlike Herr Gilmore, has been a major contributor of substance to the list since its inception, and hopefully he will continue to be in the future. The idea that he should moderate the list was of course a silly one, but for reasons which do not reflect badly on him in the least.
What Mr. Blatz fails to realize is that the "problem" which certain people tried to solve never really existed. The quality of the Cypherpunks list is determined solely by the amount of signal, not by the amount of noise, unless one is getting ones feed of the list via 1200 baud long distance UUCP.
RTFM well-intentioned. And please excuse my lack of gratuitous "scare quotes." (There, is that better?) List members complained. John said there was a problem, Sandy belived him and foolishly volunteered to "moderate" (enough scare quotes for you?) the list. Maybe John has grown into a crumudgen after his years of taking care of toad.com, but he's all but out of the picture now. At least he had the common sence to realize that he was not able to run the list in an appropriate manner and force a carthises. Better that then to let the list die out from continuing moderation.
The notion that the list was ever threatened by the humour of Dr. Vulis, or the one line bot-spammed insults about Tim May's heritage, is an absurd one. No one should have had any problem ignoring such material, and only a politically naive fool would buy this as the excuse for the blatant usurpation of the list by Gilmore and crew.
Agreed. I do, after all, read the "unfiltered" list. But you have no right to tell Mr. Gillmore what to with his machine and his time. Perhaps 10 days is not enough to get a smooth transition to another system, but it does have the nice effect of moving people to action. You could take a look at the literature on social loafing for a full explanation. Cordially, Jeremiah Blatz "standing on top of the world/ never knew how you never could/ never knew why you never could live/ innocent life that everyone did" -Wormhole -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBMwFYPskz/YzIV3P5AQHS7QMAyccuA5PbahXKAsJNsYdOKZHODqJng7C1 aTJ/BYYefEHngNSSb9KNu/deGUV1rrq/+zbmWfEDQYxBANpkJ6O60w8kJmR7iAI2 iH3TpsuKokazw/3QCLWrKh6AO9TNxwJ1 =2iSj -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
John Gilmore writes: [ . . . ]
Either you list denizens will, among yourselves, put in the energy to build a new home for the list (and run it in whatever way your volunteers want) by Feb 20, or the list will cease to exist on Feb 20. [ . . . ]
Denizens, I can provide a pentium box running Linux with a T1 connection to MAE-West to host the list, if there is still interest. The domain name would be hidden.net (reserved in anticipation of running a remailer). I'd use majordomo. Before doing this, I'd need the answers to a few questions: - Is there still any interest in a cypherpunks mailing list? - Is alt.cypherpunks a better alternative? - Should posting to the list be limited to subscribers? Naturally, one could subscribe from a nym.alias.net account. - Majordomo can be configured to require confirmation of subscription requests, thus avoiding some attacks. Is there any simple way to protect against mailloops? Directly accessing the listname-outgoing alias? - Is a pentium up to the task of running a list of this size and volume? Let me know what you think. Regards, Patrick May
- Is a pentium up to the task of running a list of this size and volume?
A pentium is definitely up to this task. I've been running it the whole time on a slower 40MB SPARCstation-2 (that also runs netnews and general computing). Give it a big /var/spool partition (mine is 60MB) because every message will sit in the queue for days (*somebody* on the list will have an unreachable name server or MX server until the msg times out). Give it lots of RAM and paging space, since each sendmail process takes about 2MB virtual, 1.4MB physical, and you will have dozens running at the same time. The new version of majordomo (that allows confirmation of subscriptions) will help a lot. It needs a small patch though, to do exponential backoff on the lock file, or when you get a flood of messages, thirty majordomo processes will burn up the whole machine trying and failing to get the lock file. You'll need a BIG mailbox for the bounce messages, and someone (or some unwritten software) to scan it every day or two and delete the lusers whose mailboxes are full or who dumped their account without unsubscribing. The bounce mailbox on toad gets between 1 and 4MB of email a day; more when the list is under attack. You'll want to run the latest version of BIND on the machine, too, since doing DNS name-lookups on a thousand email addresses is expensive. You want them all in the in-memory cache on the same machine. The name daemon burns about 7MB virtual, 5MB real RAM once its cache gets loaded. Make sure that every message sent to the list gets into at least two logfiles -- on separate partitions, in case one fills up. At least if you want to have an archive of what's been sent.
I can provide a pentium box running Linux with a T1 connection to MAE-West to host the list, if there is still interest.
Make sure you are getting "transit" service to the Internet, instead of trying to cheap out with "peering" to a few major networks. Without transit service ("we'll carry your packets to anywhere even if the destination is not on our network") you won't be able to route packets to some places on the net. This will cause mail to those subscribers to sit in the queue for days and then bounce. The real issue is how willing you are to put your own time into dealing with problems. Not only do things go wrong by themselves, but there are malicious assholes in the world who will deliberately make trouble for you just because they like to. Spending a day or two cleaning up the mess is just part of the job. Check your level of committment two or three times before taking on the task -- so you won't end up getting disgusted after a month or two and putting the list's existence into crisis again. It's not a "set it up and forget it" kind of operation. John
John Gilmore wrote:
A pentium is definitely up to this task. I've been running it the whole time on a slower 40MB SPARCstation-2 (that also runs netnews and general computing). Give it a big /var/spool partition (mine is 60MB) because every message will sit in the queue for days (*somebody* on the list will have an unreachable name server or MX server until the msg times out). Give it lots of RAM and paging space, since each sendmail process takes about 2MB virtual, 1.4MB physical, and you will have dozens running at the same time.
The new version of majordomo (that allows confirmation of subscriptions) will help a lot. It needs a small patch though, to do exponential backoff on the lock file, or when you get a flood of messages, thirty majordomo processes will burn up the whole machine trying and failing to get the lock file.
You'll need a BIG mailbox for the bounce messages, and someone (or some unwritten software) to scan it every day or two and delete the lusers whose mailboxes are full or who dumped their account without unsubscribing. The bounce mailbox on toad gets between 1 and 4MB of email a day; more when the list is under attack.
You'll want to run the latest version of BIND on the machine, too, since doing DNS name-lookups on a thousand email addresses is expensive. You want them all in the in-memory cache on the same machine. The name daemon burns about 7MB virtual, 5MB real RAM once its cache gets loaded.
Make sure that every message sent to the list gets into at least two logfiles -- on separate partitions, in case one fills up. At least if you want to have an archive of what's been sent.
I can provide a pentium box running Linux with a T1 connection to MAE-West to host the list, if there is still interest.
Make sure you are getting "transit" service to the Internet, instead of trying to cheap out with "peering" to a few major networks. Without transit service ("we'll carry your packets to anywhere even if the destination is not on our network") you won't be able to route packets to some places on the net. This will cause mail to those subscribers to sit in the queue for days and then bounce.
The real issue is how willing you are to put your own time into dealing with problems. Not only do things go wrong by themselves, but there are malicious assholes in the world who will deliberately make trouble for you just because they like to. Spending a day or two cleaning up the mess is just part of the job. Check your level of committment two or three times before taking on the task -- so you won't end up getting disgusted after a month or two and putting the list's existence into crisis again. It's not a "set it up and forget it" kind of operation.
Listen to it, John is absolutely right. Running a big mailing list is an incredible commitment and it is important to realize what you are getting into. Another suggestion may be to set sendmail expire option to one day instead of five so that messages that cannot be delivered would bounce faster and not clog the queue. - Igor.
Patrick May wrote:
Before doing this, I'd need the answers to a few questions:
- Is there still any interest in a cypherpunks mailing list?
yes
- Is alt.cypherpunks a better alternative?
it is not an alternative, it is a complement. i think that alt.cypherpunks will be a failure because all of the troubles of alt.* hierarchy.
- Majordomo can be configured to require confirmation of subscription requests, thus avoiding some attacks. Is there any simple way to protect against mailloops? Directly accessing the listname-outgoing alias?
Add X-Loop: header and use procmail to protect against messages FROM_DAEMON and FROM_MAILER.
- Is a pentium up to the task of running a list of this size and volume?
yes, it is the other stuff that's the problem -- memory, connection speed, etc. - Igor.
Hi, John - thanks for supporting and putting up with us all these years. How do you feel about continuing support for the cypherpunks-related lists that are also on toad.com, coderpunks and cypherpunks-announce? I'd guess that if we move the cypherpunks list to another machine, rather than mutating it into alt.cypherpunks, the -announce list should probably also move once the new list is working. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)
Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com> writes:
Hi, John - thanks for supporting and putting up with us all these years. How do you feel about continuing support for the cypherpunks-related lists that are also on toad.com, coderpunks and cypherpunks-announce?
I'd guess that if we move the cypherpunks list to another machine, rather than mutating it into alt.cypherpunks, the -announce list should probably also move once the new list is working.
# Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)
If NoCeMs were used to 'highlight' specific subsets of traffic, there'd be no need to have separate forums: just let lmmmarcathy (or perry metzger) highlight cryptorelevant traffic, and let Gilmore (fart) highlight announcemen --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
participants (11)
-
Adam Back -
Bill Stewart -
dlv＠bwalk.dm.com -
Eric Cordian -
Firebeard -
Greg Broiles -
ichudov＠algebra.com -
Jeremiah A Blatz -
John Gilmore -
mpd＠netcom.com -
Patrick May