Lists

What this section covers

A single address is passed around as a fact. A set has to be assembled, written down, arranged and republished, and each of those steps introduces something that was not in the original.

These studies treat the list as the object of study rather than the addresses in it. How it ages. Why two careful people produce different ones. What its length says. What the word verified can and cannot mean on it. And what the only list that really matters is, which is the one you keep yourself.

1. A list is a copy, not the thingEvery published set is a copy made at a moment by somebody who was not the author.
2. How a list goes staleThe ageing is invisible, which is what makes it a problem rather than an inconvenience.
3. Two honest lists can differDisagreement between sources is weak evidence of anything, including bad faith.
4. A list longer than the setThe extra entry is the object worth examining, and length is how it hides.
5. What a list can and cannot proveThe word verified is about a check, and the check is the part that matters.
6. The list you keep yourselfThe only list that matters at the moment it matters, and nobody maintains it but you.
7. Reading the age of a listAge is the property that matters most and is reported least reliably.
8. A list that ranks its entriesA mark beside one entry is a claim, and the claim usually has nothing behind it.

The premise these studies share

Nobody outside the market decides what the set contains, which is argued in nobody on this side decides what the set contains. Every list, including the one at the top of this page, is a report of a decision made somewhere else at some earlier point.

That single fact determines what a list can honestly claim, and most disagreements about mirror lists dissolve once it is held in view.