Mailing lists are a poor forum for sending "I'm up" messages out, for various reasons:

1. Volume. 20 remailers x a message every 4 hours = 120 message a day to the list. Not a good idea, for many reasons.

Okay, every 8 hours. Now we're down to 60 messages - not too different than a lively C'punks day. :-)

2. Scaling. Even with fewer than 20 remailers, the system breaks down. Imagine if our goal of hundreds of remailers is met!

So instead of one central remailer, we use some number of 'regional' listservers (4 remailers, each handling 5 'local' remailers). Then if one croaks, it's a minimal loss to the system.

3. Not automated. Sending a text message out to everyone, and then having interested folks write a script to parse the messages and whatnot, is more work (probably) than having them finger or ping the remailers themselves (don't have to go through mail as the intermediary). And the remailer operators themselves would have to do the donkeywork of creating and sending messages automatically, which most of them probably won't do.

"Cypherpunks write code"

4. Mail to the list is hardly perfect itself, as we've seen many times. Delays, downtime, etc. Why inject a new delay/variable?

(2) above.

5. Function. Basically, it's not the function of a mailing list like ours to broadcast such messages. If many remailers do it, why not money providers, other mailing lists, etc.?

C'punks remailer was used as a f'rinstance (functionality example). So there's a different remailer mailing list, and a banks remailer mailing list, and money provider's mailing list, ad nauseum. Who cares? Those interested in remailers listen in on the remailers mailing list, and don't listen to the banks list, and versey-vicey.

6. Not all remailer users are going to be on the Cyherpunks list, so why would the list be the solution? (Better would be either distribution of the pinging scripts, a centralized finger pinger (I like the sound of that: "finger pinger") such as Matt Ghio was running, or perhaps an "alt.anonymous.messages.status" group, acting as a message pool.

(5) above

These are just the objections that come inmmediately to mind.

--Tim May

Finger merriman@metronet.com for PGP2.6ui/RIPEM public keys/fingerprints.