Re: Rejection policy of the Cypherpunks mailing list

[Sandy Sandfort <sandfort@crl.crl.com>]

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                          SANDY SANDFORT
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C'punks,

On Sun, 26 Jan 1997 paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk wrote:

> You need have no sympathy. Those members of this list see it as it 
> is, a list that was supposed to be, in some small way, a "model" of 
> an anarchistic discussion forum for the subject of cryptography,...

Nonsense.  It was supposed to be a discussion of crypto and 
other technologies in support of privacy.  The founders, Hughes,
Gilmore, May and Daniel were focusing on that goal.  The list
structure was anarchistic (and still is to those who understand
the concept of anarco-capitalism).  Obviously Gilmore is not
wedded to the idea of letting every fool use his bandwidth.  In
personal discussions as recently as yesterday, Hughes had no
problem in supporting some mechanism to promote civility on the
list.  I don't think anything May has written would suggest he
would have a problem with keeping things polite.  His only 
argument seems to be over methodology.  He thinks filtering is
the answer; I don't.  Reasonable minds may differ.  Hugh Daniel
has been instrumental in providing technical help with regard to
moderation.  Finally, the fact that the vast majority of list
members have not seen fit to "vote with their feet" should 
suggest how most really feel about moderation.  (By the way, if
you don't like moderation, you would hate Eric Hughes' favored 
solution.)

> ...That was the intended direction of the list, it 
> has rapidly disentigrated over recent months into a censored list 
> where the elite post to the main list and anyone else is nearly 
> always relegated to a seperate list for the crypto-untermenshcen.

Again, nonsense.  The moderation experiment (moderation, not
censorship) has been in effect for all of ONE WEEK.  Where does 
Paul get this hysterical "recent months" stuff?  

> If you want to talk about intellectual dishonesty try the following:
> 
> Imagine if you will a list, the original purpose of which was
> to act as a free and open forum for discussion of cryptography and 
> related issues...

Paul's argument is the essence of literal conservativism,  "but 
I don't things to change!"  Without change, though, there can be 
no progress.  Moderation is a one-month experiment.  There is no
intellectual dishonesty in saying, "let's try something else for
a while."

> Now imagine that list falling into a state of content based 
> censorship and censorship based on an unspoken but ever present 
> class structure,...

"Unspoken but ever present class structure"?  I wonder how Paul
was able to divine this?  Certainly it is unspoken, but that, of 
course, it because it does not exist anywhere but in Paul's
fertile imagination.

> It is a foregone conclusion that the upper class of list members will 
> have no dispute over the censorship and therefore the change will be 
> permenant,...

Great!  I thought that hadn't been determined yet.  What a 
relief.


 S a n d y

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