From: John Pearson <john@cognac.apana.org.au>
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 11:21:32 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: "alt.cypherpunks" people?
Message-ID: <199702061921.LAA28338@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Adam Back:
> 
> What do people think of starting an alt.cypherpunks USENET newsgroup?
> 
> It has some advantages:
> 
> [...]
> 
> And some disadvantages...
> 
>  1. Cross-posting in USENET is a problem, especially in alt newsgroups
> 
>  2. Commercial spam is a problem with newsgroups
> 

You may want to check out alt.sysadmin.recovery; they use the 
moderation mechanism to produce a group that is unmoderated, 
but spam-resistant.  It would be impolite to describe the technique,
but it should be apparent if you browse a few articles.

Another way to avoid crossposts is to have a robomoderated group,
where a bot automatically rejects articles which are crossposted,
and approves all others.

>  3. USENET distribution is likely less efficient of overall bandwidth
> 
>  4. News propogation times are often poor (Exeter univ. receives news
>     about a week late) This is a real killer in my view.  I have
>     another news server I can access at the moment, but not everyone
>     may have access to a reasonable news server.
> 
>  5. News access is more complex for some people.  Some alt newsgroups
>     are not carried by some servers.  Perhaps news-to-mail and
>     mail-to-news gateway would solve these problems.
> 
>  6. Some have argued in the past on this topic that the mailing list
>     medium is better because it is more exclusive, as it requires more
>     technical competence, and an active enough interest to subscribe.
>     This is an elitist argument.  Perhaps it is relevant though, if we
>     are trying to maintain a mailing list where technical discussions on
>     how to improve privacy are to take place.  I wouldn't call this
>     attitude censorship though.
> 

7. Usenet traffic, at least in remote regions (looks around), is often 
   assigned less bandwidth/lower priority than mail, so a reader may
   not see all of the messages (AFAICT, I normally see about half or 
   less of what actually gets posted to the groups I read), even if the 
   group is "well propagated".

>[...]

John P.
john@huiac.apana.org.au