META: Tiered Discussions

I spent more time figuring out gpg than guessing the password. Now to save everyone else the time and effort.

SPOILER ALERT

The password is http://lesswrong.com/lw/p0/to_spread_science_keep_it_secret/ and the decrypted message is:

As has been discussed elsewhere, Less Wrong is currently fairly unapproachable to newbies. In particular, the learning curve is ridiculously steep. People who have read a few posts are told, in effect, to read the entire archives [TVTropes] before commenting.

Suppose there were a separate discussion area dedicated specifically to those who are just starting out, or perhaps who have taken a few of the first steps down the road. When posting there, it would be considered poor etiquette to expect others to have read later material, like expecting fourth-graders to know trigonometry, or high school graduates to be able to read Feynman diagrams. Ideally there would be a series of tiers of discussion, so that people can learn the material interactively, like in a classroom, rather than doing the equivalent of shutting themselves in a closet with a textbook.

In order to motivate people, of course, we should lock up the higher-level discussion areas behind tests of merit. We should also think of some sort of standard miracles people can do to publicly demonstrate their Level Six superpowers.

Secret discussion areas don't scale. All you need is one defector (me) and everyone knows the secrets. A newbie area or a "let's read the sequences" thread would be handy. A delayed RSS feed of the sequences would also be nice.

Not all of us know how to use gpg. I think the right way to decrypt that message is to run...

gpg --output decrypted.txt --decrypt input.txt

...and then enter the password. Is this correct?

Edit: Yep, that's it.

I'm preparing to rewrite the top post completely. To that end, I'm archiving the original version here.

You aren't allowed to know what this post says unless you can figure out what LW post this sentence is a clever reference to. The URL of that post is the CAST5 symmetric key for this one. Please help downvote spoilers into oblivion.

-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)

jA0EAwMCtYf1bHFxvmRgyekK9+VOnIJEKESX8yr4CXk5IGX3rsoyS50Nsc+uCy85
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5PAYtwLpTmaakO/kwSe/ctd/Dr5KYOC+H68ciCXyRERQQrWczdI1gROPv+bmOp0R
TsQqGsWJhvuCMp4ZAsnj3HV/DhJKihb8F9TXwxjuC3tUghVrzzHUKk1ramGlWlK/
iMB9D2DWovBCbK00jfIQeZxu/kXBHns2DlcFwueGPShdarmtHCaWd/8wqChJ75sS
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KlUyJ9dCDfSiTq+HsQH/kJHR8bmudomJC+ftnBoGxC5BLuQhC4gCPcaYM8evqWzP
kkR1OhjhWE9H+O2o53t75IIz/P2LUhwrfqGhBgD3PTAmxw94gbOz0Ckj3UjhKnTY
ID22NmrHRRZyJammi6TViHTWRNSLHKifMIGp0/hOC1o=
=sPUV
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----

A data point on the effectiveness of this challenge: it took me about four minutes and two tries to get the passphrase. (My first try was too clever and used the URL to a post which has been censored.) I've been on LW for a little over a year.

It's hard to tell what you're expecting people to say in this discussion, given your spoiler downvote request. Any sensible response to the encrypted content is going to be more or less of a spoiler.

In the spirit of having fun, though, you can get at the (probably disappointing) remainder of this reply by using the full name of the writer who is the target of the allusion in the seventh paragraph of the post the URL of which is the above's passphrase.

-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin)

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-----END PGP MESSAGE-----

This is the first post I've laid eyes on since gaining mod powers that I considered banning. I just downvoted, instead, but wow, do not want.