Form Letter, for "What Happened to the List?"

[Timothy C. May]

> > 
> > >     to notify all those lost Cypherpunks that they may resubscribe
> > >     if they wish to.  Majordomo reports 295 subscribers just now,
> > 
> > I thought it was nice the way it is...   Seriously, I got a mass mail
> > message informing me that the list was wiped and to resubscribe.  
> 
>     I got early notice but never saw the mass mailing.  Perhaps because
>     I quickly resubscribed I was not "one of the mass".  Pardon my
>     late goodwill.

I believe the "mass mailing" was done by Mike Ingle, and was based on
his list of who posted to the list in some period. (Bart, you
should've gotten it, as you'd made posts in that period.)

I prepared a form letter right after the outage and have been bouncing
it back to those who send "What happened?" messages either to me or to
the list (blindly). This has dwindled down from several per day to an
average of one per day lately. Restoring the list subscription from
backups (I presume backups of toad are made...) may be possible, but
knowing how to use majordomo is a kind of basic competency test, one
could argue, and the list is now presumably pruned of dead-end
addresses and gateways to knowhere. Anyone still in the dark who
hasn't at least sent a message to majordomo, to the list in general,
or to one of the frequent posters, is probably happier off the list.

Here's my form letter, which you are welcome to bounce to anyone who
happens to ask you what happened.


THIS IS A FORM LETTER (to save me having to type the same stuff)

You have asked what happened to the Cypherpunks list.

I don't know, but as of Sunday night, 8 May, there were only about a
dozen or so subscribers. Apparently something happened to the list. I
have messages in to Eric Hughes and Hugh Daniel.

The subscriber list may get restored. I don't know.

[More recent news: The problem is being worked on. Meanwhile, people
are gradually resubscribing manually. Instructions below.]

You can also resubscribe by sending a message to majordomo at toad.com
with this as the body:

subscribe cypherpunks

If this is successful, you'll get a confirmation message within a few
minutes.

Volume is likely to be low, until things get back to normal.

I hope this helps.

--Tim May, not acting officially on behalf of the list.




-- 
..........................................................................
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: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."