976-OVERDOSE

[Timothy C. May]

Dave,

I suspect others will tell you what I'm telling you: we considered
breaking up the list a while back, and concluded we should not.

Some reasons:

- much more work for list maintainers. What _you_ save by not having to
hit the delete key as often will be more than made up for by Eric
Hughes having to do a lot more work (and he refuses)

- having as many sublists as you suggest would be way too much...we
even decided that a simple split into "technical" and "political" was
not warranted, at least not back then. (Perhaps this can be
reconsidered, thought the extra list maintenance work is still an issue.)

- many will post their messages to more than one group, to make sure
it gets to the appropriate people

- topics bounce around, anyway, so some groups would have no traffic
(and folks would send messages like: "Hey, how come it's so quiet on
cypherpunks.music?")

- people would miss key debates and key developments because they
didn't think some group was important. (And if and when they decided
something was important, they'd probably then ask others to forward
them relevant material.)

- the solution is for people to quickly delete message topics they
don't want to see. Off-line newsreaders like Eudora (for the Mac) are
quite useful.

-Tim

-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay at 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: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.