The death of the list as we know it (tm)

I've only been monitoring the list for a couple of days, but already it is clear
to me that the traffic is _way_ too high to manage as a mailing list.  Apart
from the volume, the very structure of Email tends to dis-associate message
from reply, and make it difficult to do any filtering before reading (one of
the great joys of using _nn_ IMHO).

A humble suggestion: someone undertake to create alt.cyperpunks and shadow the
newsgroup and the mailing list (so that posts to one also go to the other).
In my case this would cut my reading time in half and increase my "harvest"
by a factor of two.  The mailing list would still be available for those who
cannot get the group.  In addition, as the number of people getting the mailing
list would decrease, it would probably delay the death of the net by bandwidth
overload for a few hours (currently, it is scheduled for sometime in June 1997,
last time I checked).

Also, even an unmoderated alt group can be made moderated (and thus, filter out
most of the forgery, etc) by appropriate use of technology described in this
mailing list.

+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ 
| Robert J. Woodhead, Biar Games / AnimEigo, Incs.    trebor@forEtune.co.jp |
| AnimEigo US Office Email (for general questions): 72447.37@compuserve.com |

In message <9310080056.AA27566@dink.foretune.co.jp>, Robert J Woodhead writes:

> A humble suggestion: someone undertake to create alt.cyperpunks and shadow th
> e
> newsgroup and the mailing list (so that posts to one also go to the other).
> In my case this would cut my reading time in half and increase my "harvest"
> by a factor of two.  The mailing list would still be available for those who
> cannot get the group.

I strongly support this idea, so I'll mention a further advantage:
kill files! No more wading through boring message about anonymous
remailers, digital cash an so on (or RSA weaknesses, or
crypto-legality or whatever your personal bug happens to be).

Patrick O'Callaghan			Internet: poc@usb.ve
Departamento de Computacion		NICNAME: PO22
Universidad Simon Bolivar 		Tel: +058 (2) 906 3242, 906 3254
Sartenejas, Baruta, Edo. Miranda	FAX: +058 (2) 93 71 28
Caracas, Venezuela			"Just messing about in quotes"

Patrick O'Callaghan writes:

> I strongly support this idea, so I'll mention a further advantage:
> kill files! No more wading through boring message about anonymous
> remailers, digital cash an so on (or RSA weaknesses, or
> crypto-legality or whatever your personal bug happens to be).

Well, my mailer program (Eudora) has better "kill file" capabilities
than my newsreader program (tin), so converting the mailing list into a
newsgroup would be a lose for me. Not that what's convenient for me is
what we have to use, just that _your_ particular situation is not
universal. 

My point is this: there are many sound reasons to keep a group such as
ours a mailing list and not open it to every freshman in college who
can grep for "punk" and stumble across us, or for every
Sternlight-type bozo who delights in creating noise and rancor in
groups.

As others have mentioned, tools exist to locally feed mailing list
traffic into pseuodo-newsgroups, which can then be treated as the
newsgroup format some folks desire.

We debate this issue every couple of months. Give it up. Or start your
own newsgroup. Or use one of the existing newsgroups.

--Tim May


-- 
..........................................................................
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.
Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.

Timothy May writes:

>My point is this: there are many sound reasons to keep a group such as
>ours a mailing list and not open it to every freshman in college who
>can grep for "punk" and stumble across us, or for every
>Sternlight-type bozo who delights in creating noise and rancor in
>groups.

This is called "security through obscurity."  I'm shocked to see it
advocated in this list!  ;^>

Opening up the list into a newsgroup has risks, but they can be mitigated
and doing so would make it easier to use, and reduce the load on toad.

One way to mitigate the effect on the list itself is (1) make the
connection 1 way (list->group), with postings to the group sent through
and anon remailer and (2) postings to the group from the list could
be signed to authenticate them.

Bottom line, isn't one of the goals of punkery in general (whatever
flavor) to _spread_ knowledge.  Shouldn't this stuff be shouted from
the digital treetops?

Please table the mailing list vs news discussion.

	- Eric Blossom

Robert Woodhead writes:

> This is called "security through obscurity."  I'm shocked to see it
> advocated in this list!  ;^>

And I'm shocked--:-}-- that people keep beating a dead horse,
expecting that if they repeat their arguments enough times, something
will miraculously change. This rarely works, and mainly just dilutes
the content of the list further.

> Opening up the list into a newsgroup has risks, but they can be mitigated
> and doing so would make it easier to use, and reduce the load on toad.

I won't repeat my own arguments for the 7th or 8th time. In any case,
Eric Hughes has the final say and he has said it will not happen in no
uncertain terms.

If you vote otherwise, send your votes to dev/null. They'll count more
that way. (There is no pretense that the list is a democracy.)

> Bottom line, isn't one of the goals of punkery in general (whatever
> flavor) to _spread_ knowledge.  Shouldn't this stuff be shouted from
> the digital treetops?

Not one of the major goals, from my perspective. We don't advertise,
we don't lobby, we aren't even _set up_ to do such a thing. And when
we're interviewed (and anybody _can_ be), nobody spouts off the
"Cypherpunks agenda."

Books and magazines spread knowledge. Notice that we don't even have a
FAQ? We're hardly in the education business.

We're a loose collection of folks, bound by the mailing list and the
various physical meetings (and those of you out in the hinterlands
should simply organize your own gatherings). The interest in
remailers, digital money, code, etc., is the main glue.

Political action is a detour. The Clipper debate was one such detour,
occuoying too much time for several months, though I suspect some good
came out of it.

Anyway, it's not for me to say what the Cypherpunks are, but all those
folks shouting that "we" are a lobbying group, or whatever, are
misguided, I think.

One of the advantages of a mailing list is the implied sense of
community and of a shared history. It is expected that most on the
list have seen the traffic go by, even if they skipped many of the
messages. Newsgroups, on the other hand, encourage people to dip in
for a few days, ignore for several weeks, dip in again, and so on.
Thus, a huge number of repeat topics as people dip in and out and miss
the context of comments, the history, and so on. Progress stalls, even
more so than progress may've stalled in some areas on this List.

And while I agree that TLAs may be reading this list, one way or
another, making it a newsgroup would open it up for archiving around
the world, for appearance on those CD-ROMS filled with Usenet traffic,
and for easy grepping by future employers and future government
snoops. In other words, a public forum.

That's great if the goal is to educate people about crypto, not so
great if the goal is frank discussion of tough problems.

--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.
Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.

> Bottom line, isn't one of the goals of punkery in general (whatever
> flavor) to _spread_ knowledge.  Shouldn't this stuff be shouted from
> the digital treetops?

No, not necessarily. I think that you're missing the mechanics behind
the list. 
 
In any case, I think you can pretty much forget about shifting this
list anywhere from where it is now -- it (we) are doing _exactly_
what the recipe calls for....
 
Cheers!

_____________________________________________________________________________
Paul Ferguson                                                               
Mindbank Consulting Group                                    fergp@sytex.com   
Fairfax, Virginia  USA                                       ferguson@icp.net

trebor@foretune.co.jp (Robert J Woodhead) writes:
> I've only been monitoring the list for a couple of days, but already it
> is clear to me that the traffic is _way_ too high to manage as a mailing
> list.

It has been worse, it will get better.  This list goes through phases where
the discussion ranges from the good technical to the annoying op-ed that it
has been recently.  If it is way too high for you might I suggest you try
getting better software on your side to manage the traffic.

> A humble suggestion: someone undertake to create alt.cyperpunks and
> shadow the newsgroup and the mailing list (so that posts to one also go
> to the other). 

Has been proposed and shot down quite frequently.  The signal to noise
ratio of a newsgroup is much higher than a list.  A mailing list has a
self-regulating feature in that when the traffic becomes high and the
signal low everyone gets annoyed and _people learn to shut up!_  A
newsgroup does not have this feature and flamefests and other bullshit has
a tendency to feed upon itself until it drowns out everything else.

Just take a look at sci.crypt at the moment if you want a quick example.
There is a group dedicated to political crypto issues.  People still
insist on posting info to what should be a technical group even though
there is already a talk group for this stuff, and no amount of chastising or
reminders will dissuade them.

If someone were to do this to the cypherpunks group I would not be
surprised if someone just started a new mailing list and limited it to
invitation only for those who are interested in the real mission of this
group (cypherpunks write code, remember?  whining about bbs legal bullshit
and other topics just doesn't seem to fit the purpose.)

> In my case this would cut my reading time in half and increase my "harvest"
> by a factor of two.

You can set up an easy filter and gateway so that at your site the list
does go to a local newsgroup (some people already do this), but please do
not presume to make such a decision for the rest of us.  If you want to
make it easy for yourself please feel free to do so.  There is apparently a
lot of software out there for handling this kind of traffic volume that you
are just not aware of.

> The mailing list would still be available for those who
> cannot get the group.

Only the traffic would triple with even more bullshit as Sternlight and the
like takes notice of our little world.  More people would drop from the
list as you open the floodgates.

> Also, even an unmoderated alt group can be made moderated (and thus,
> filter out most of the forgery, etc) by appropriate use of technology
> described in this mailing list.

It takes someone about 5 seconds to figure out how to get around all of
that.  One advantage a mailing list gives us is the ability to maintain at
least on central point of administration so that if we did select a scheme
such as that on the extropians list we still have that option.  Once
something becomes a newsgroup we lose _all_ control we might have on the
list.  

Do not split the list, do not dip it in the mediocrity of the usenet, get
better software and let the system regulate itself; have some patience. 

jim

> Do not split the list, do not dip it in the mediocrity of the usenet, get
> better software and let the system regulate itself; have some patience. 
>

I strongly agree with Jim -- if you don't like the surf, get the fuck
out of the water. Sorry.

Robert J Woodhead says:
> 
> I've only been monitoring the list for a couple of days, but already
> it is clear to me that the traffic is _way_ too high to manage as a
> mailing list.

All the excess traffic is metatraffic about how bad the traffic is.
Quit talking about the excess traffic and the problem will end.

Perry
Who gets 300-500 email messages a day and still gets his work done,
and who doesn't complain lightly about volume.