Moderation [Tim,Sandy]

Since it seems to be the topic of the day, here are some of my thoughts on
moderating CP.

o Moderation achieved what it could achieve. Spam is no longer clogging up
the list. Insults, i.e., "Tim Mayo fucks children", are no longer polluting
the list.

o Moderation did not achieve what it couldn't achieve. The level of noise
has been reduced, but signal has not been increased. This is sad, but true.
The attempt was probably bound to fail, since many of the "top signal
generators" have long left the list and are not about to come back. All
that is remaining are a few diehards, such as myself, some TLA goons
(knowingly or unknowingly) working against the cause, and many newbies and
observers.

I believe that Cypherpunks is beyond hope of recovery. In fact, each day
Cypherpunk (as in cypherpunks@toad.com) lives on, it does damage to the
cause. Let's kill the list. Once and for all. Let the hard core crypto go
to Coderpunks, the politics to Cryptography, and the garbage into the void.

I am well aware of the name recognition and reputation capital associated
with CP, still I believe it best to *kill the list*.



-- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred

   "I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and
    violence, I would advise violence." Mahatma Gandhi

Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com> writes:
> I believe that Cypherpunks is beyond hope of recovery. In fact, each day
> Cypherpunk (as in cypherpunks@toad.com) lives on, it does damage to the
> cause. Let's kill the list. Once and for all. Let the hard core crypto go
> to Coderpunks, the politics to Cryptography, and the garbage into the void.

What about the leaks?  (rc4.c, Mykotronics dumpster contents, etc)
Where do they go?

You expect Perry to stick his neck out and approve them?  (Perry
Metzger is the moderator of cryptography@c2.net, started recently as a
moderated version of cypherpunks for those who don't know what the
`cryptography' list is).  The existance of cryptography argues against
the need for `cypherpunks' to be moderated.  Why two competing
moderated lists?

Secondly the status of garbage is in the eye of the beholder.  There
are a few posts which are probably considered garbage by near
everyone, but lots of other stuff which really just depends on what
the reader is interested in.

The problem with censorship or moderation is that it waters down the
absolutism of free speech.  Free speech in electronic media, with
cypherpunks type I, and type II remailers, is the closest thing to
truly free speech yet.

A lot of people seem to regard Jim Bell's assasination politics as
suitable material for censoring.  Yet it is pretty crypto relevant.

Sandy's job is pretty hard to do.  For instance I recently posted
this, which ended up in cpunks-flames, due to being in a thread which
contained a mild flame 2 messages back:

: Diffie-Hellman key generation, there are two main ways of generating
: the diffie-hellman prime modulus, method 1:
: 
: 	p = 2q+1
: 
: where q is a prime also.
: 
: And method 2:
: 
: 	p = r.2q+1
: 
: where q is a prime and r is a randomly generated number.
: 
: With method 1, the security parameter is the size of p in bits (or
: size of q, as they are related).
: 
: With method 2, there are two security parameters, size of q and size
: of p in bits.  
: 
: Method 2 has the advantage that key generation is faster as it is
: quicker to generate new random numbers r, than to repeatedly generate
: trial prime q as you have to do in method 1.  However is the security
: weaker in method 2?  What size of p and q do you have to use to get
: the same security as for same size of p in bits as in method 1?  What
: should be the relationship between the size of p and q?

(I freely admit to injecting additional crypto relevance just for the
fun of seeing it be filtered cpunks-flames -- though I was interested
in discussion also).

> I am well aware of the name recognition and reputation capital associated
> with CP, still I believe it best to *kill the list*.

I'd prefer to see various filtering services offered, and the list
retained.

My main objection with the moderation experiment is that the main list
was renamed.

Adam
--
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes:

> Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com> writes:
> > I believe that Cypherpunks is beyond hope of recovery. In fact, each day
> > Cypherpunk (as in cypherpunks@toad.com) lives on, it does damage to the
> > cause. Let's kill the list. Once and for all. Let the hard core crypto go
> > to Coderpunks, the politics to Cryptography, and the garbage into the void.
> 
> What about the leaks?  (rc4.c, Mykotronics dumpster contents, etc)
> Where do they go?

How about sci.crypt, where they usually go before being forwarded to
cypherpunks?

> I believe that Cypherpunks is beyond hope of recovery. In fact, each day
> Cypherpunk (as in cypherpunks@toad.com) lives on, it does damage to the
> cause. Let's kill the list. Once and for all. Let the hard core crypto go
> to Coderpunks, the politics to Cryptography, and the garbage into the void.

    Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't(wasn't) there an implied threat of 
moderation on the cryptography@c2.net list? Mr. M started it with the intent
of getting away from much of the cruft (ADD, & etc.) that had accumlated 
here, and he was quite open about moderating it if he thought it needed it.