Re: Extropian women and privacy issues, a challange

Michelle Jones (shelly66@ibm.net)
Mon, 10 Aug 1998 22:34:09 -0700

> >>>Don't worry about those few Extropian females dude, they're mostly...

owwww.... {8-[ anyone can make comments like these just to bait the group and

watch the wailing and gnashing of teeth. the fact is, *we dont know who we are.*
we have no statistics on those who read the extropian newsgroup. many, if not most
of the email addresses are nongendered, such as spike66 for instance.

i see that extropians tend to love privacy. althoprivacy is not important to me

personally, i have gotten religion on the necessity of others to protect theirs.

so, question: how can we find out how many women and how many men, how many straight and how many gay, or just plain how many people are out there in extropians
*without any single person having to reaveal any traceable information* about themselves?

if we set up a website where anyone could anonymously log on and set down gender and preference, then any one person could corrupt the entire database by logging
on an indefinite number of times and in putting false information. the person who started the lesbian extropian meme might intentionally do this, for instance.

on the other hand, if we had every respondant register in order to prevent multiple
entries, then each response could be traced to an individual. the most private extropians (understandably) would not log on, which would also corrupt the database.

so, i set forth this challange to all extropians: come up with a means of polling
the group in such a way that prevents any individual from logging on repeatedly,

without revealing the source of any single entry to protect the privacy of those

who answer the poll. it must be done online, no writing on dead trees or postage
stamps. to the person who discovers such a means, i offer the grand prize of...

my undying admiration and deepest gratitude. {8^) spike