From: paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
To: Sandy Sandfort <sandfort@crl.com>
Message Hash: 4bdbcb737a6b46a089f34c0a248950a63613b090069583df3970fb99e431d4c8
Message ID: <854471616.912211.0@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 1997-01-28 21:04:04 UTC
Raw Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 13:04:04 -0800 (PST)
From: paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 13:04:04 -0800 (PST)
To: Sandy Sandfort <sandfort@crl.com>
Subject: Re: Rejection policy of the Cypherpunks mailing list
Message-ID: <854471616.912211.0@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
> > ...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?
The list has been disentigrating for some time since the disgusting
incident when Dimitri was forcibly unsubscribed from the list. There
have also been a number of postings from members of the list claiming
to understand anarchism who support censorship to "protect new
members of the list".
> > 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."
So, there would be no intellectual dishonesty in a country claiming
to be a free and open society "trying out" fascism for a month or
two? - After all it`s a private country just as this is a private
list....
> > 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.
There is a clear trend easily observable on the list whereby certain
members postings are censored when their content is of a standard
that, if the moderation were objective and based on content alone,
would warrant their being sent to the censored list.
If anyone here archives all of the list postings or is willing to
retrieve them from the archive we can run some statistical tests and
comparisons in a few weeks once the sample is large enough, however,
the list oberfuhrer and leutenant von Sandfort will claim the
statistical correlation between poster reputation among the upper
class of list members and the number of their posts let onto the
moderated list is caused by persistent flamers so this will not
convince them..
> > 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.
I think you`ll find your poor attempt at making light of the
situation does little to hide the fact that this censorship has
finally confirmed that this is a private list and is no longer meant
to be a free, anarchic discussion forum.
I can tell you one other thing for sure, even if the moderation
"experiment" were to end in a month as a last ditch attempt by John
Gilmore and Sandy Sandfort to recover some of their lost credibility
it would be a vain and entirely unsuccesful attempt.
Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security
Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org
Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/
Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1
"Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"
Return to January 1997
Return to “Sandy Sandfort <sandfort@crl.com>”