From: paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 13:06:28 -0800 (PST)
To: Sandy Sandfort <sandfort@crl.com>
Subject: Re: Rejection policy of the Cypherpunks mailing list
Message-ID: <199701282106.NAA01621@toad.com>
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"