On Thu, 23 Nov 1995, Lynne L. Harrison wrote:

<snip>

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I am inclined to agree with Perry in as much as the volume of posts to the cypherpunks list is greatly increased by reposts of news from other mailing lists, USENET newsgroups, WWW sources, newspapers, TV programs, films, books, talks, etc. While some of the information posted is interesting, and relevant, some others are less relevant, bordering on noise.

The proposal: a separate list for current-event reports/news/reposts.

<attila> someone suggested a new list --moderated. My concern, so circulated, is that whoever (including backups to cover vacations and travel) accepts the responsibility must not thrash any of the code posts. My suggestion for making the list effective is to always post to c|punks, even if you are on the code list which means "cypherpunks" is still the same; who ever is doing the moderating then forwards all the code threads to "cypherpunks.moderated" --you get the best of both worlds.

1. Creating a separate list, IMHO, will not stop cross-posts to the list. People will merely add one more list to their "cc" line.

<attila> no doubt. for instance, whoever put c|punks on the ACLUNATL@aol.com biweekly list would just hit both and that one cannot be unsubscribed except by the original subscriber. however, that one is concise -let's hope we do not get hit with "digitaliberty," "VTW" or any of the rest of the prolific slammers/day. the issue as pointed out above is a separate moderated and non-postable list.

2. More importantly, I am troubled with the "this is OUR list" attitude that some people have expressed. Yes, it is a pain when their are cross-posts that are completely off-topic but, as Adam correctly points out, some are interesting and relevant.

<attila> but is not the charter of the list "cypherpunks write code" an issue. I don't go as far as Perry on irrelevancy (and Perry breaks his own commandment at will --as do I).

One of the tenets proposed by those on this list is free speech. Most of us are on more than one list, so I'm assuming that most of us receive 100+ messages a day. It is irritating to read something that's been crossed to c|punks that has nothing to do with this list. However, it only takes a few seconds to arrive at that conclusion and trash the post.

<attila> that may be true, but it is annoying enough that I use 'procmail' to waste the lists (and Dr. Fred) before they even make the message list. AND, 'procmail' separates all the mailing list into separate folders on the way in --I have not read a newsgroup for almost a year unless I am looking for something very specific.

The "they are targeting this list" borders almost on paranoia. While some paranoia is healthy :) - it should not lead to the cry to ban posts that have been *deemed* to be inappropriate.

<attila> any one with a political agenda is going to cross post any list which, in their opinion, might be an audience. the ACLU post today is obvious --freedom of speech and congressional action to effectively shut down the internet, which certainly falls within our mainstream "interests."

I find it interesting that those who express that the net should be a community where expression is to be encouraged and defended - until the time arrives when such "unsolicited/unwanted/offensive/irrelevant" expression knocks on one's front door.

<attila> this is a valid concern. the last figure I saw for lists was 12,000+. if some of them do not overlap, where did they find 12,000 topics worthy of a mail list? as I said, procmail takes care of the yeoman's portion, but it is not the be all to end all either. I'm not at the point of writing an ai based preprocessor which analyzes the content of the folders before invoking my mail reader, but how far off is that? information may be key to survival, but...

Regards - Lynne

<attila> comment to Lynne: that is the key to life as we know it!

******************************************************* Lynne L. Harrison, Esq. | "The key to life: Poughkeepsie, New York | - Get up; E-mail: | - Survive; lharrison@mhv.net | - Go to bed." *******************************************************