Forums before death by AOL, social media and spammers... "We can't have nice things"
|    alt.comp.freeware    |    Generic free software discussions    |    39,988 messages    |
[   << oldest   |   < older   |   list   |   newer >   |   newest >>   ]
|    Message 38,465 of 39,988    |
|    D to All    |
|    this newsgroup has trolls    |
|    19 May 25 23:34:13    |
      From: noreply@dirge.harmsk.com              for three decades and counting, all active newsgroups have been occupied by       the usenet troll farm (ever since "eternal september" opened the floodgates       in the mid-1990s) . . . fortunately, most newsreaders (dialog, tbird, etc.)       can use "ignore" flag [i] on sub-threads without ignoring the entire thread,       and scoring can be used on overview(xover) and non-overview message headers       with simple rules applied globally to all newsgroups (e.g. to demote/delete       cross-posted articles), and more specific rules custom-tailored for popular       newsgroups/hierarchies ... which can turn any active newsgroup into a ghost       town if your scoring rules simply delete offenders instead of demoting them,       as signal-to-noise ratios in popular newsgroups probably exceed hundreds to       one, and surely thousands to zero in forums involving politics and religion       which are swamped entirely by troll farm rhetoric, narrative and propaganda              but don't let that dissuade anyone serious about exercising free expression       from contributing their plain text articles anyway, especially since usenet       lurkers outnumber contributors by a wide margin and reliable usenet servers       typically retain their "spool" of articles for at least a year, some longer,       so that your lurking audience (silent majority of newsgroup subscribers and       visitors) might discover, download and perhaps read, whatever you've posted       before it, too, expires from whatever server(s) they may be connecting with       (and articles can be reposted, improved, edited, consolidated, posted again)              every usenet "faq" has advised newsgroup contributors to ignore trolls, and       to avoid responding to obvious trolls, and learn to spot troll conversation       or "trollversation" (/trol-ver-sa'shen/) that becomes apparent in newsgroup       threads that attract their sock puppets into feigning newsgroup discussions       intended solely to discourage substantive dialog from occurring under their       "big brother is watching you" watch; so be careful, it's a jungle out there              --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05        * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)    |
[   << oldest   |   < older   |   list   |   newer >   |   newest >>   ]
(c) 1994, bbs@darkrealms.ca