From: noreply@mixmin.net   
      
   On Tue, 08 Jul 2025 03:25:40 GMT, LV-426  wrote:   
   >On 2025-05-20 10:04?a.m., D wrote:   
   >>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   
   >   
   >Good advice, thanks. I just discovered this news group and was happy to see   
   > a healthy set of current message postings without too much spam.   
   >One thing in particular that I noticed happening in other news groups that   
   > are seemingly going well, is that all of a sudden someone will start   
   > spamming messages into it for a large binary download. It's so annoying   
   > because drowns out everything else.   
   >Certain newsgroup servers will filter out this garbage, but others don't. I   
   > noticed that the current Eternal September free news server is pretty good   
   > at filtering out this kind of thing. But there's another news server I use   
   > that doesn't.   
   >It's sad that there are people and or bots out there that are designed to   
   > disrupt various text news groups and flood them like this. It's a clear   
   > sign of intentional malice in my opinion.   
      
   i'm only a retired hobbyist, jack of all trades, expert only in staying out   
   of trouble . . . but the consensus among veteran nntp server administrators   
   seems to be mostly accommodating of the usual usenet troublemakers, sort of   
   a sacred cow to avoid the appearance of bias or censorship (some servers do   
   issue nocems, cancels etc., but most servers don't bother with such trivia)   
   so it's been open season for the troll farm and other bad actors, lone wolf   
   agitators, provacateurs, cross-posters, off-topic, rude, uncouth, ugly, and   
   everything else they could possibly do to drag these unmoderated newsgroups   
   down into the quagmire of mediocrity (comparable to television commercials),   
   and as if their horrid militarized googlespam blitzkriegs weren't enough to   
   shake usenet off its bedrock foundation, they seem more determined now than   
   ever to finish what began around the time they shut down the penet remailer   
      
   fortunately, most usenet newsreaders have some filtering/scoring capability   
   e.g. where overview (xover) headers include subject: "yenc", those binaries   
   automatically get either the ignore[i] flag, or better yet delete[del], etc.   
      
   popular free expression has ever been unpopular with the status quo, dating   
   back perhaps to paleolithic times, but certainly since prometheus stole the   
   fire, materialists have owned and controlled the earth... it's their planet,   
   and by now this whole solar system and beyond is lucrative, they own it all   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)