X-Message-Number: 4365 Date: Sat, 6 May 1995 22:57:25 -0700 From: "Kevin Q. Brown" <kqb> Subject: Re: cryonics.politics In message #4356 "Keith F. Lynch" <> asked: >Is there still a cryonics.politics list? If so, then I think that >would be a good place for it. I never did move the "CRYONICS.POLITICS" list to cryonet.org, not only because it would cost me more money to set up a second mailing list and we didn't seem to have any immediate need for it, but also because it wasn't clear to me what sub-list(s) would be most useful. (Messages 3466, 3484, 3495, and 3507 give more information about the thinking at the time.) Also, the term "cryonics.politics" was in practice closer to a euphemism for "cryonics.infighting.and.character.assassination" :-( and I hope we don't go back to that. The main question now is whether or not there should be a sub-list and, if so, what should be its purpose. Considering the threads we have had lately, I can imagine some people opting for/against including the thread on uploading/philosophy/theory-of-computation or, now, how cryonics relates to government/politics. Also, some people might instead want a "mail reflector" list that distributes each message as it's received (rather than accumulating messages for a once-a-night digest) although I'm not sure that cryonet.org/c2.org is yet ready to handle that much email traffic during prime-time. Fortunately, we can have a somewhat market-based solution; those people who want messages on a topic X to go to a sublist can pay to have it created. Some people will want a forum that _includes_ topic X and therefore be willing to pay for it. Other people will want a forum that's _free of_ topic X and therefore be willing to pay for it. Another mailing list on cryonet.org/c2.org will cost at least $3./month and possibly $5./month or more, and that's assuming a major cost-saving trick of allowing each person to subscribe to only one of the two lists and writing software to do auto-forwarding from the main list to the X list. (Each mailing list costs 10 cents/month/subscriber in addition to some fixed charges, so it's best if the content is arranged so that each person needs to subscribe to only one list.) Frankly, I have had too little sleep lately to have much enthusiasm for doing the administrative and programming work for this, especially if the funding pays for less than two years of the second list, but I might change my mind after a good rest. Another possibility is that someone else could set up a customized email service from the main CryoNet feed. I could "echo" CryoNet messages as they arrive to one email address, but not to the approx. 250 people on the entire list. Hopefully, any replies to mailings sent via such a customized service would go back to the main CryoNet list so that we don't unnecessarily Balkanize cryonics-related communications. Kevin Q. Brown Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4365