full-disclosure - Administrivia: Poll

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From: paul at voltagenoir.org (Paul M. Hirsch)
Subject: Administrivia: Poll

>From my count, "Morning Wood" has sent 103 messages to
full-disclosure since March 23, 2003.  Many of those messages
were in response to flames.  The signal to noise ratio has
gone to hell, but not from those 103 messages.  I site the
the following as more significant problems than one person:

1) An unyielding flood of responses to and complaints about Morning
   Wood.
2) Whining about "lack of professionalism" (despite the
   fact that the name of this list is not 
   "Ultra-Respectable-Uptight-Full-And-Homogenous-Disclosure"),
   and despite the fact that pointing out how "unprofessional"
   others are is as unprofessional as being crude
   or sloppy. 
3) "I am unsubscribing because this all sucks" messages.

Number 2 is particularly irritating because we should WANT
non-professionals to release code and info to this list.
The goal should be to make releasing on Full-Disclosure something
to be proud of, regardless of what color hat you claim to
wear.  I welcome the announcement from some 13 year old kid
who can't spell and injects profanity into every sentence!
Would we rather he/she keep the information to themself?

As others have said, if you don't want to listen
to Morning Wood, block him yourself.  If you don't want
political discussion or flame wars on the list, then don't
start them!  Don't respond to them!  Morning Wood is not even
a good example of a list troll, since he sticks his neck out
to offer on-topic info from time to time.

The name of the list is "Full-Disclosure".  Don't bend to
popular opinion about unpopular speech.  Protect open discourse,
and protect open research and security.  This whole
"Morning Wood" thing should be a non-issue.  If the skin
of so many of this list's members are too thin to handle
him, I wonder how they handle other lists that have real trolls
and flame wars of epic proportion.  Freedom and openness have
a price.  Sometimes it is ugly, or tiresome, but it is always
worth it.  I urge this list not to buckle and succumb to the
seductive siren named censorship.

-Paul