976-OVERDOSE

Fellow Cypherpunks,

I know that some of you have lives, jobs and studies and you probably, like
me, are ofttimes overwhelmed by the sheer voluime of mail on this list.

I have a simple proposal to solve th
is problem: break the current list into topic areas.

These would include:

  anon/pseudo_cpunks   Anoymity/Pseudonymity
  remailers_cpunks     Remailer Technology
  dining_cpunks        DC Nets
  random-cpunks        Random Generators
  digimoney_cpunks     Digital Banking
  pgp_cpunks           PGP App/Current Info  <- new vers info/var. plat's
  ziplips_cpunks       Crypto-Censorship
  fweee_cpunks         Whistleblowers (The "Keith Peterson Area"?)
  physmtgs_cpunks      Physical Meetings/Conferences  
<- CFP, events...

 and several more that I've forgotten, I'm sure...

We should clearly state the general thread of each topic. People could
subscribe to as many as they want to and thus dramatically reduce the amount
of mail they get on topics about which they have little or no interest.

I'm learning a lot from the list, but the sheer volume of the postings is
becoming pretty unmanageable. We seem to have a range of subspecies
developing, so it make sense to cater to them seperately.

I hope we can remedy this situation before many more people have to
unsubscribe. Most newcomers from Mondo articles, etc. should  probably be
subscribed to the <announce> list first, then maybe we could periodically
post synopses of what's available on the other topics and let them wander in
more deliberately. I hope everyone appreciates that my approach is geared
toward bringing in more quality participation and not a flurry of
curiousity-cats who dash in and out and post UNSUBSCRIBE mail to the whole
list (thus gumming things up even further).

What do you Punks think? I hope to see a comment or two about this from
people, I think it's an issue whose time has come. "An ounce of prevention os
worth a pound of cure" as they say.

  dave "verbum sat spaienti est" del torto

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@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.