From: John Pearson <john@cognac.apana.org.au>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: 8f6b0d098bd974e15fa26e617888f1934840fc29b87cce20ff3e8f8350881f56
Message ID: <m0vsTo4-000JGWC@cognac.apana.org.au>
Reply To: <199702050029.QAA08873@toad.com>
UTC Datetime: 1997-02-06 18:45:04 UTC
Raw Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 10:45:04 -0800 (PST)
From: John Pearson <john@cognac.apana.org.au>
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 10:45:04 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: "alt.cypherpunks" people?
In-Reply-To: <199702050029.QAA08873@toad.com>
Message-ID: <m0vsTo4-000JGWC@cognac.apana.org.au>
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
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