Re: Recommendation: Creation of "alt.cypherpunks"

[dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM)]

"Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net> writes:

> At 1:20 PM -0600 2/11/97, Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
> >If the people decide for creation of a new USENET newsgroup,
> >we need to think very hard about actually moving it to a different
> >hierarchy from alt.*. I would propose comp.org.cypherpunks,
> >comp.cypherpunks, sci.crypt.cypherpunks or something like that.
> >
> >A comp.* or sci.* newsgroup, if created, has the following advantages
> >over an alt.* newsgroup:
> >
> >1) There is usually less spam in sci.* or comp.*
> >2) There are virtually no completely irrelevant flamewars
> >3) The propagation will be a lot better
> >4) More people will be able to read it because of the issue of providers
> >   not carrying alt.*.
> >
> >I see nothing that would make a sci.* or comp.* newsgroup  worse than
> >alt.* newsgroup.
> 
> Sure, and this has come up in every past discussion of creating
> "alt.cypherpunks."
> 
> But the creation of alt.cypherpunks is _easy_, and needs little permission
> or support, whereas the creation of "soc.culture.cypherpunks" or whatever
> takes work, requires a vote, blah blah blah. And so it never gets off the
> ground.
> 
> (Nor is it clear to me, and perhaps not to others, that it belongs in the
> the various places Igor mentioned. Comp.org.cypherpunks probably is the
> best fit, but then many would cite the "comp" part to try to insist that
> only _computer_ topics be discussed. Likewise, the "soc" domain would skew
> discussion...etc. "Alt" has the nice advantage of explicitly not be part of
> sci, or comp, or soc, or even talk.)
> 
> Since posting my comments I've just seen the proposal that tivoli may host
> a list. Fine with me. But I wonder how long Tivoli and its parent company,
> IBM, will tolerate such things as postings of dumpster divings at Mykotronx
> and RSADSI, of deliberate slams against Tivoli products (a la the case John
> Gilmore referred to this morning), postings about assassination markets,
> and so on.
> 
> I still feel that the time has come to move virtual forums such as ours out
> of U.S. jurisdictions. Given that most European nations are worse in some
> ways (no Holocaust denial posts allowed in "cypherpunks@foobar.de"?), I
> recommend the alt.cypherpunks as the best overall compromise.

(I apologize to everyone whose e-mail has gone unanswered this week - I've
had a bunch of other stuff to do, but I'll get to it eventually. Also, I posted
the Anshel+Goldfield zeta function paten number - do check it out.)

Random thoughts:

1. A newsgroup like comp.privacy.cypherpunks will be carried on a lot of
corprate news servers that don't carry alt.* (or even soc.*). Note that
soc.org.cypherpunks is inappropriate since cp is *not* an organization. :-)
Another possibility is sci.crypto.cypherpunks. (True, people whose corporate
newsservers don't carry soc.* and talk.* can use dejanews - provided their
firewall lets them.)

2. It takes more work to create a comp.* newsgroup than an alt newsgroup.
It takes a vote. I'm willing to be one of the proponents and generally help
with the process. (Both I and Igor have been co-proponents of major Usenet
newsgroups - don't know about other people onthis list. :-)

3. An unmoderated Usenet newsgroup would have even ore crap than this mailing
list. I've been thinking of how to deal with crap, and with the obvious desire
by some people to delegate their decision what to read and what not to read
to other people. 

While cpunks@toad worked, one could subscribe to a filtered version offered
by at least 2 people. There was no easy way to get those articles that either
filterer considered worth reading: if you subscribed to both lists, you'd get
most articles twice.

Here's a proposal: anyone should be free to issue 'highlight' NoCeM's for the
unmoderated cypherpunks newsgroups. Perhaps there will be a 'bot immediately
highlighting submissions from well-known posters.

Someone reading the newsgroup with a nocem-enabled newsreader (such as gnu)
can choose to read only those articles that one of the filterers he trusts
has already marked as worthy of his attention. (E.g. Sandy can issue NoCeMs
to his heart's content.) However the filterer can't stop someone from not
using NoCeMs and reading the entire newsgroup traffic without incurring
moderation delays.

Most people don't have nocem-enabled newareaders yet... Which is where the
network of cypherpunks majordomos Igor's been busy creating comes in very
handy. 

When one of the nodes in the distributed cpunks2news gateway gets a submission,
it should xmit it to the other known gateways and post it to Usenet. Also it
should grab postings from the Usenet newsgroup and forward them to its mailing
list. However in addition to the unedited mailing list, some gateways can
choose to offer a filtered list controlled by one or more nocem issuers:
i.e. one might be able to subscribe to cypherpunked-filtered-by-either-
ray-or-sandy and receive articles only when the gateway receives a
nocem from one of the two listing their message-ids. (Better yet, one
might specify in the subscription which filterers to use.)
I don't think this is a very hard thing to hack up.

Sorry for the typoes: now Imust run, but I'd beinterested in the feedback on
these thoghts.

---

<a href="mailto:dlv@bwalk.dm.com">Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM</a>
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps