Re: Effects of Marking/Delaying Nonsigned Posts

>If the delays remained entirely unexpected or random, quality would
>degrade.  Humans, however, have an uncanny ability to modify their
>own behavior.

I disagree with your inferrence that quality would stay roughly
the same.

From Tim May:
>(I am not getting list traffic right now, presumably due to the Netcom
>overload problem, and so am only seeing messages I am directly copied
>on. And maybe not all of them, either. [...]

This seems to indicate that Tim is currently having trouble taking
part in much of the discussion that is currently not directed at
him due to delays in email processing.

Gosh, I wonder if that effects the quality of his Cypherpunks
Experience(tm).

Multiply that by a possible 25% (arbitrary) of the list being delayed
 andmy crystal ball says round after round of the same replies and
comments from different people will filter in after the discussion
of the original comment ceaces. This frustrates the readership who
is trying to find the meat of the list as well as the senders (which,
it should be noted, is the desired goal) by having thier material
appear irrelevent due to being delayed. I'm worried about the reader,
mostly, but then there are those who will be frusterated enough to
leave, for example Tim.  Or perhaps I am one of the few here who values
Tim's comments to the list enough to think the list would loose something
if he took off. And I'd wager that Tim isn't the only one who would leave.

Perhaps your ability to filter the garbage from the treasure is
truly uncanny, Eric, and all this wouldn't effect you. I don't think
most of the rest of us are quite so amazing.

>I am also willing to risk a small amount of degradation to encourage
>people to actually use encryption tools.

I guess this is the answer then.

There we go.

>Having notification that a message wasn't signed was never presented
>as one of the purposes of the proposal.

My mistake then, I thought you had proposed marking messages as unsigned
as an intermediate step. Too hard to keep track of who is saying what in
this particular thread.

-j, preparing to start the Cypherpunks Postal List. After all, what's a
little delay?

>Eric

From: jamiel@sybase.com (Jamie Lawrence)

   Multiply that by a possible 25% (arbitrary) of the list being delayed [...]

This afternoon I considered starting the initial delay at one minute
and incrementing the delay by one minute each time a message gets
delayed.  Perhaps the increment would be 15 or 30 seconds--whatever.
The point is that the delay would ease in slowly and folks would get a
chance to adjust.

   >Having notification that a message wasn't signed was never presented
   >as one of the purposes of the proposal.

   My mistake then, I thought you had proposed marking messages as unsigned
   as an intermediate step.

I had proposed marking them, true, though not as notification, but
rather as automated commentary.  Notification is a (trivial and
useless) effect of the measure, but not its purpose.

Eric

Eric Hughes wrote:

> This afternoon I considered starting the initial delay at one minute
> and incrementing the delay by one minute each time a message gets
> delayed.  Perhaps the increment would be 15 or 30 seconds--whatever.
> The point is that the delay would ease in slowly and folks would get a
> chance to adjust.

A concrete basis for comment.

I post about 4 messages a day to the Cypherpunks list. Many others
post less than 1 per day, some only 1 every week or so. (And so on.)

Effects on Active Posters (4 or so per day): 4 x 15 seconds = 1 minute
after the first day = 30 minutes after the first month  = 3 hours
after the first 6 months = 6 hours after the first year

(Double these numbers if the "30 seconds" figure is used.)

Effects on Casual Posters: 2 per week x 15 seconds = 30 seconds after
the first week = 2 minutes after the first month = 24 minutes after
the first year


Pretty clearly, casual posters would not be significantly affected,
while active posters would be.

The desired intent? I doubt it. But typical of mechanistic attempts to
modify behavior. (Yes, seen on the Extropians list.)

--Tim May


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From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)

   Eric Hughes wrote:

   > This afternoon I considered starting the initial delay at one minute
   > and incrementing the delay by one minute each time a message gets
   > delayed.  

The counter would be global to the server, not local to each user.

   A concrete basis for comment.

You'll likely want to comment again, though.

Eric