From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 06:26:38 -0800 (PST)
To: tmcghan@gill-simpson.com
Subject: Re: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
Message-ID: <199702041426.GAA27956@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


tmcghan@gill-simpson.com wrote:
> in a message allegedly from:  "Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>
> > the really important issue is this: is the _physical hosting_ of the
> > Cypherpunks mailing list coterminous with the "Cypherpunks"?
> { much thoughtful and well-phrased commentary elided }
> > I would have had no problem had John announced that he was creating
> > a new list, the "Good Stuff" list, with Sandy has his Chooser of
> > Good Stuff.  But by making the _main list_ the censored one, this
> > skewed things considerably.

> Now that the horse is out of the barn, ( or maybe not? ), I can't help
> but ask whether one specific 'change to the change' would have
> satisfied most of your objections:  retaining 'cypherpunks' as the
> name of the unedited, all-the-crud-you-can-read-and-then-some,
> version, and adding an 'cp-worthwhile' list for those of us who prefer
> not to wade thru mountains of garbage to glean a few precious tidbits.
> What's in a name?  Is perception more important ( to you ) than
> reality?  If just swapping names between cp and cp-unedited would make
> such a large difference, I humbly suggest to you that you consider how
> much labels need to matter.  Is the title of the group more important
> the the content?  From where I sit, this looks a lot like a
> style-over-substance complaint.  Of course, I don't have my trifocals
> on just at the moment.

If it did not suit a specific purpose, they wouldn't have done it
that way.  You can take it to the bank that they did this because
it was the only way to keep the 1300-plus sheep subscribed to what
they wanted to be their "main" list.