Re: Rejection policy of the Cypherpunks maiing list

["William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@amaranth.com>]

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In <199701241411.GAA25271@toad.com>, on 01/24/97 at 09:09 AM,
   Toto <toto@sk.sympatico.ca> said:


>  I would like to point out, however, that anyone who has had their
>posts 'sorted' into the 'flames list' is now a 'known flamer', as
>evidenced by the fact that their post has been designated a 'flame'
>on a list run by a champion of free speech on the electronic
>frontier.

Intresting....

Does a single flame make a flamer??

I have in the past been involved in heated arguments on just about every
list/newsgroup I have been involved in. :)

I think this goes back to the topic of reputation capital. IMHO the occational message
that get's droped into the 'flames list' would have little effect on ones reputation.
While a complete ban all of ones posting or even a majority of ones posts making it to the
'flames list' could/would have a detrimtal
effect.

Hmmmm... Actually there could be an intresting side affect of a moderated list to a
posters reputation. Lets take the following example:

John Doe likes posting rants & flames 90% of the time. The other 10% of the
time he posts intelegent messages. Now on an un-moderated list a majority of
subscribers would get tierd of his rants, write him off as a kook and kill-file him. His
10% of intelegent posts would be lost in the 90% of noise and his
reputation would be adversly effected within the group.

Now on a moderated list the 90% of rants & flames would never be seen by the
list only the other 10%. His would wind up having a much higher reputation
among the group compaired to if all his posts were seen. 

I am not quite sure how to judge this effect. Should one take into account
the kooky behavior of a poster when veiwing his 'non kooky' posts? Does
moderation have a detrimental effect to establishing a reputation based system for a group
(how would Don Woods reputation faired if his rant's on OTP's
& ISP had been filtered out?)


>  It is obvious that some of the more intuitively intelligent list
>members are aware of this, as is indicated by the nervous fear with
>which they 'explain why' their post is crypto-relevant.

IMHO this is sheepish though I have noticed it before moderation started.

If I have somthing to post to the list I see no reason to justify why I am
posting it. This post I am making now has zero crypto-relevance and I make
no appoligies for it. Do I think it is relevant to the list? Yes otherwise
I would not have posted it. Either way no explination for the post is needed.



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William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
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