Administrivia: The Three Lists
Greetings. As most of you likely know, I run three major email mailing
lists of very long standing: PRIVACY Forum, PFIR, and NNSquad. They are
all "old" lists by Internet standards -- PRIVACY started back in 1992,
for example.
Over the years (decades) they have changed in ways that many of you have
no doubt noticed.
Originally they were very much two-way lists with a great deal of
submissions from users. They've evolved into almost entirely one-way
lists from me, as more and more submitters demanded that their
submissions only be posted anonymously, and/or became increasingly
unsuitable for distribution -- "tinfoil hat" or increasingly obscene in
nature.
It seems that many people can't even write a public message on technical
policy issues without lacing them with the kind of language you'd expect
from an unsocialized horror like Donald Trump. But to paraphrase the old
song, that's their misfortune and none of my own.
As a point of fact, my policy has always been that messages sent to the
lists be fully attributed including email addresses for replies, with the
only exception being for special situations like whistleblowers and the
like. Being scared of spam is not an acceptable excuse for not standing
up for what you want to say publicly.
This trend from two-way to one-way has been evident around the Net, as
social media has tended to amplify the effects of trolling and the
necessary intense moderation required to keep the trolls within their
own putrid cesspools.
As the original intended topic areas of the Three Lists have increasing
become interrelated and interdisciplinary, I have tended -- most of
the time -- to hit all Three Lists with the same materials, even when any
given message may seem off-topic in any given case. This is partly to
try limit at least to some degree the administrative time I must spend
with these lists -- which of course are not revenue generating and
most decidedly don't help to keep the lights on around here.
I have at times toyed with the idea of combining the Three Lists into
one, but it's not likely to happen any time soon. The thought of the
technical complications involved is onerous. It's hard enough to keep
large email lists going these days. Overly aggressive spam blocking,
security "fixes" that fundamentally break mail transport mechanisms
throwing messages into black holes, and a range of other aspects make
this all increasingly unpleasant.
Add to that the fact that many of the key software systems I use to send
email messages and administer these mailings I've developed and/or
modified extensively over the decades, and the thought of altering them
in any fundamental ways triggers a range of rather nightmarish failure
scenarios. ("Danger, danger Will Robinson! Do not tamper with alien
machinery!")
Finally, I maintain my right as the (hopefully) benign dictator of the
Three Lists to occasionally post items that can reasonably be viewed as
off-topic, if I feel they are important to our cultures and lives, or
even just particularly entertaining. These may (as you have likely
noticed) include statements and opinions regarding political issues and
political persons. In my view, issues such as who will be the next
president of the United States impact literally all other aspects of
our lives in the modern world, and I will not play the "neutral,
non-political techie" given the many challenges we face. I do understand
that some readers will disagree with this aspect of my list
administration, and those persons are reminded that the link at the
bottom of these messages takes them to the servers where they can
unsubscribe or make other changes to their subscriptions.
And that -- dear friends, enemies, frenemies, and other readers out
there in the planetary ether -- is about all I have to say about this
for the time being.
We now return you to your irregularly scheduled mailing lists and mayhem.
Take care, all.
Best,
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently doing so.
My opinions expressed here are mine alone.
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