Re: Anonymous posts

[Cathy Quinones <quinones -at- MINDSPRING -dot- COM>]

In message <v02120d02ac84d61b2c8c -at- [198 -dot- 70 -dot- 51 -dot- 130]> - Kat Nagel/MasterWork
<katnagel -at- eznet -dot- net> writes:
:>
:>>Date:    Mon, 18 Sep 1995 08:57:32 -0700
:>>From:    anonymous-remailer -at- SHELL -dot- PORTAL -dot- COM
:>>Subject: <No subject given>
:>>(SNIP)
:>>                                - ANON
:>
:>
:>This is getting annoying.  Is there anyway to filter posts from anonymous
:>remailers so they won't be rebroadcast to the entire list?

I guess this is back to the issue of whether it's a good idea to restrict
usage of the list.  Personally, I access it as a newsgroup, so that's where
my comments come from:

Can't we just ignore them??? I think there comes a time in the life of every
newsgroup when some idiot starts posting flamebait and instigating chaos.
People post publicly because they WANT attention, otherwise, they could just
e-mail the person who wrote whatever comment triggered the reply, right?  As
so, these misfits CAN be "hit where it hurts" by simply refusing them the
option of playing along.

Don't take me wrong, I KNOW these posts are annoying, and also that it is fun
to flame these people publicly.  However, I've seen it again and again:
ignore them and then they will go away because there's no payoff.  Then they
go off to post the usual "100 ways to skin a cat" at rec.pets.cats or
something.  Pathetic but true.

The alternative is to have a moderator who screens the posts, who's going
to volunteer to do that?  And what if one disagrees with what the moderators
thinks is "fit to print"?

This stuff used to bug me a whole lot more.  Now I depend on a kill file to
pluck out anonymous posts before I can even see them; if certain people get
bent on replying to annoying posts (which means I see their replies), I just
put them in the kill file too :) and drag them out a few weeks down the
road.  At first I really resisted doing this, I felt slighted that some jerk
was forcing me to take these extra steps.  But later I realized this is the
equivalent of not tuning in to, say, radio or TV programs I find offensive.
Or to hitting the "mute" button when the beer commercials come up. And it
DOES give me some satisfaction to imagine these poor pathetic little dweebs
camped out by their computers, checking their e-mail and the newsgroups they
were "infiltrating" repeatedly... waiting for an insult as validation to
their existence... and getting ZILCH.

They are kind of like roaches and other vermin: feed them and they'll keep
coming.  Starve them and they go bug your neighbor (on that analogy, I think
of my kill file as a prowling kitty cat or terrier, snagging up the rats and
snapping their little necks :).

==============================================================
Cathy Quinones                               Poicephalus rule!!
quinones -at- mindspring -dot- com                      %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
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