Slashdot | Roasting Sacred Cows

[John Young]

Jim, I appreciate your resistance. Still, our experience on Cryptome with
offering only URLs indicates that they are little used unless there's a taste
of what is worth going to see. No doubt that it would be easiest to 
give only URLs and let the lazy bastards graze readers-digest crap 
elsewhere. But it's not the deadheads we'd like to swap info with,
for they never give back enough to make it worthwhile -- usually the
shits just send more URLs without explanation as if we can read
their profound thoughts.

What we've found is that if you treat your readers with respect they'll
give it to you, even send you stuff you'd never see otherwise. That is,
they'll inform you and educate you in ways you can't do alone, though
that shared experience isn't for everyone, I'll grant you, in particular
when you want only to talk and preach and not listen and learn.

So we've found that the better we make our samples the more likely
readers will figure we're offering something worth reading, and if they
like it they'll eventually return the favor, and if we're lucky we get
better than we offer -- indeed, that is always the case:  the best
stuff comes in from folks who figure they'd like to take part in a
mutually rewarding situation, as we see on cypherpunks.

URLs alone send a message of laziness, contempt, cluelessness about
the benefits of communication as against dancing castaway on an island.
For that solo shit you don't need CDR, the Net, the world, or think you
don't until the radio farts coming from your ass are only cancer static.