Re: Effects of Marking/Delaying Nonsigned Posts
If the delays remained entirely unexpected or random, quality would degrade. Humans, however, have an uncanny ability to modify their own behavior.
I disagree with your inferrence that quality would stay roughly the same.
From Tim May: (I am not getting list traffic right now, presumably due to the Netcom overload problem, and so am only seeing messages I am directly copied on. And maybe not all of them, either. [...]
This seems to indicate that Tim is currently having trouble taking part in much of the discussion that is currently not directed at him due to delays in email processing. Gosh, I wonder if that effects the quality of his Cypherpunks Experience(tm). Multiply that by a possible 25% (arbitrary) of the list being delayed andmy crystal ball says round after round of the same replies and comments from different people will filter in after the discussion of the original comment ceaces. This frustrates the readership who is trying to find the meat of the list as well as the senders (which, it should be noted, is the desired goal) by having thier material appear irrelevent due to being delayed. I'm worried about the reader, mostly, but then there are those who will be frusterated enough to leave, for example Tim. Or perhaps I am one of the few here who values Tim's comments to the list enough to think the list would loose something if he took off. And I'd wager that Tim isn't the only one who would leave. Perhaps your ability to filter the garbage from the treasure is truly uncanny, Eric, and all this wouldn't effect you. I don't think most of the rest of us are quite so amazing.
I am also willing to risk a small amount of degradation to encourage people to actually use encryption tools.
I guess this is the answer then. There we go.
Having notification that a message wasn't signed was never presented as one of the purposes of the proposal.
My mistake then, I thought you had proposed marking messages as unsigned as an intermediate step. Too hard to keep track of who is saying what in this particular thread. -j, preparing to start the Cypherpunks Postal List. After all, what's a little delay?
Eric
From: jamiel@sybase.com (Jamie Lawrence) Multiply that by a possible 25% (arbitrary) of the list being delayed [...] This afternoon I considered starting the initial delay at one minute and incrementing the delay by one minute each time a message gets delayed. Perhaps the increment would be 15 or 30 seconds--whatever. The point is that the delay would ease in slowly and folks would get a chance to adjust.
Having notification that a message wasn't signed was never presented as one of the purposes of the proposal.
My mistake then, I thought you had proposed marking messages as unsigned as an intermediate step. I had proposed marking them, true, though not as notification, but rather as automated commentary. Notification is a (trivial and useless) effect of the measure, but not its purpose. Eric
Eric Hughes wrote:
This afternoon I considered starting the initial delay at one minute and incrementing the delay by one minute each time a message gets delayed. Perhaps the increment would be 15 or 30 seconds--whatever. The point is that the delay would ease in slowly and folks would get a chance to adjust.
A concrete basis for comment. I post about 4 messages a day to the Cypherpunks list. Many others post less than 1 per day, some only 1 every week or so. (And so on.) Effects on Active Posters (4 or so per day): 4 x 15 seconds = 1 minute after the first day = 30 minutes after the first month = 3 hours after the first 6 months = 6 hours after the first year (Double these numbers if the "30 seconds" figure is used.) Effects on Casual Posters: 2 per week x 15 seconds = 30 seconds after the first week = 2 minutes after the first month = 24 minutes after the first year Pretty clearly, casual posters would not be significantly affected, while active posters would be. The desired intent? I doubt it. But typical of mechanistic attempts to modify behavior. (Yes, seen on the Extropians list.) --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Cypherpunks list: majordomo@toad.com with body message of only: subscribe cypherpunks. FAQ available at ftp.netcom.com in pub/tcmay
From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Eric Hughes wrote:
This afternoon I considered starting the initial delay at one minute and incrementing the delay by one minute each time a message gets delayed.
The counter would be global to the server, not local to each user. A concrete basis for comment. You'll likely want to comment again, though. Eric
participants (3)
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eric＠remailer.net -
jamiel＠sybase.com -
tcmay＠netcom.com