🚀 go-pugleaf

PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWUP-TO HEADER

In <9212272117.AA16102@NMSU.Edu>
ted@nmsu.edu
disagrees with my previous (hasty) piece:

>> [ ... ]
>> NO 	to sci.crypt.research
>> YES	to talk.crypt
>> YES	to keeping sci.crypt as is
>> NO	to moderating either

> this is all well and good, but creating a new group has the advantage
> of leaving all the talkers behind.  since they won't hear the fact
> that there is a new place to blather, they will continue to pollute
> the group.
> it might work if there were a moderator who forwarded all talk posts
> to talk.crypt

	I should have written talk.politics.crypt, but let's find
	out if YAG (yet another group) is going to resolve the basic
	problem:

	talk.politics.crypt is just a narrower debate in the larger
	freedom of thoughts/speech debate which is well covered in
	alt.* and talk.politics.*.  This would militate against the
	creation of YAG, but it favors posting elsewhere.

	We may dislike the "pollution" of our forum by "unscientific"
	threads, but the debate is relevant to the subject since
	cryptography is so politically charged, and it is important
	to us since it may affect our right to exchange ideas on the
	subject, in this very same "sci" forum.  So, maybe we should
	not have YAG and maybe we should stick to sci.crypt.

	Maybe we could ENCOURAGE the philosophers and politicians to
	use the "Followup-To:" header so the thread can move by itself
	to the proper grounds.  There would - I am sure - be nothing
	wrong in x-posting the initial piece in sci.crypt, if only
	to alert us to the existence of a possibly interesting thread
	in a talk or alt group.  Screaming about being "sick and tired"
	and advocating moderation (if not outright policing) is not
	sustainable.  Pretending that our "talkers" are just blathering
	is downright stupid.  Finally, treating the "talkers" as if they
	had no right to talk is not productive either.  We all have a "n"
	key as well as a kill file.  Let's use them.  No need for YAG
	if we do.  Maybe.

	Since we are talking about "talkers", I should mention that
	I have a real interest in both the political impacts of
	cryptography and its scientific aspects; I am however not
	too keen on sifting through the noisier groups just to find
	a few rare items of very specialized interest.  Therefore,
	the creation of YAG may be a good compromise to satisfy
	the need for an open debate on a subject that sorely needs
	it without exposing the reader to low signal to noise ratii,
	and it will help reduce the unscientific contents of the sci
	group.  As to the idea of moving our tents every time we don't
	like the new neighbours, it penalizes those who move...

-- 
 William "Alain" Simon
 514 / 934 6320                                     alain@uniforum.qc.ca

--
 Alain - Canadian Patent #1310575
 [ ... usual disclaimer... ]