Level of Discourse on the Cypherpunks List

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

This post is about the level and quality of discourse here on this
list.

Because of the number of posts I make (and one hopes, the quality?), I
get a fair amount of personal mail directed at me from people with
personal gripes about the way the list discussion is working, or not
working, or "should be run," and so on. Some of these points I even
agree with...and sometimes I tell my e-mailers this.

But several things need to be said:

- the list has more than 700 names on it, last time I checked (send
the message "who cypherpunks" (in the body) to majordomo@toad.com)

- these folks have diverse interests

- often newbies join the list and have things they want to get off
their chest; their agenda sometimes dominates the discussion until
they've exhausted what they wanted to say (or burn out and leave the
list)

- old-timers who have been on the list for many months, and sometimes
since the beginning in October 1992, have seen the main themes many
times and may not want to contribute each time a thread comes up

- the list is an anarchy: it is not "run" by any one person, although
Eric Hughes has certain powers as List Administrator, and John Gilmore
has other powers (as owner of the machine on which the list runs).

[Please, not another debate about who owns the list, about how our
words are not owned by Hughes et. al., etc. And, please, not another
meta-debate about why shouldn't we debate this. One of the problems
with a community of 700, any of whom can take the "floor" at any time,
is that any statement gets a rebuttal, every debate becomes
contentious. _This_ paragraph will likely be angrily rebutted by at
least one of you out there.]

- I repeat: the list is an anarchy. There is no voting, no membership,
no Board of Directors, no formal policies or charter. Just a
collection of relatively common memes.

This whole issue came up again when a list member sent me a message
saying he had been lurking on the list for several weeks and that he
would "give it another couple of weeks" to see if the S/N ratio--for
the things that interested him--could be improved.

I wrote him the following reply. I have of course edited out his
comments and replaced them with vanilla comments.

"I've been lurking for several weeks. I'm unhappy with the large
number of posts which have little to do with this list. I'm more
interested in crypto methods, software, etc., and had hoped to see
more discussion of that."

There's certainly a lot of what you are talking about, wouldn't you
say? Yes, a lot of other stuff, too.

That is, mixed in with all the political stuff, the jokes, etc., is a
fair amount of commentary on algorithms, new code, status of exising
programs, etc. This certainly will appear to be fragmentary (e.g., a
bunch of short comments about D-H code), but this is because
Cypherpunks is a mailing list, not an essay list exclusively. Most of
the main stuff has been written about at least several times, so
newcomers cannot possibly expect a steady flow of tutorials, incisive
essays, etc. (And a steady flow of tutorials would turn-off a lot of
others, ironically.)

"I'm not willing to read 60-80 messages a day to find the stuff I'm
interested in. Or to find the associations with the alleged topics at
hand." [the last is my correspondents choice of phrasing.]

Then you are probably best off leaving the list, as nobody will tailor
their posts to match your exact needs, or even your approximate needs.

"I'll stay for another few weeks, then leave if things haven't
improved. However, I'd be interested in corresponding by mail with
others who are interested in working on code."

There have been at least half a dozen such attempts to create spin-off
lists, or subsets of the main list. There was a "hardware punks" list,
a "steganography list," and at least several regional sub-lists. All
have died for lack of interest. or at least are dormant. For example,
the "DC-Net list" was formed a year ago, by some guys who were tired
of reading about topics that didn't interest them. There was one
message, the welcome message, and then nothing more. C'est la vie.

(I joined several of these sub-lists, out of a sense of duty and mild
curiousity to see how they would do, and there's now zero traffic on
them. It's a critical mass problem: the Cypherpunks have the critical
mass to sustain discussions---perhaps sustain them too long, some
might say.)

"Maybe I misunderstood what the cpunks list was all about..."

The best way is to lead by example. So, where are your posts?

I look forward to them. But complaining that not all of the posts are
to your liking is pointless. I can't change what other people write,
can I? Nor can you.

The thing you can change is what _you_ write.

Besides, and this will be my final point, the list has been running
since October 1992, with an average of 400 people on it (700
recently). Most topics have been covered at least several times, and
sometimes a dozen times. The "old-timers" will thus usually sit-out
these nth rehashings of TEMPEST, or the powers of the NSA, or
steganography, or whatever.

If you want a higher level of discourse, begin it.

--Tim 


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