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Old August 20th 04, 04:37 PM
Paul H.
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"James E Kropp" wrote in message
...
Is it me, or has the rec.photo newsgroup gone to the toilet and flushed
itself! There used to be a time where this place, (and I mean all of the
newsgroups in rec.photo,) had informative, PHOTOGRAPHIC information.
I used to spend a lot of time browsing and learning, and yes, even

sometimes
contributing, to these newsgroups. Now it seems, all is lost because of

all
this rambling and dribble and porn crap!

Cant people just stick to the subject? Any thoughts on how to do this???



There are two groups of people currently ruining rec.photo.digital:

1) Trolls/spammers who post nonsense to deliberately disrupt the group.
2) Anal retentives who go on and on and on about using "killfiles"

I don't know which group is more annoying, but I'm leaning toward the
killfile crowd, most of whom want to blame and insult the victims of group
1. Sadly, the killfilers don't seem to understand the phrase, "it ain't
gonna happen", as evidenced by their seemingly endless, mindless, and
ineffectual parroting of "Use a killfile, stupid! AWK!" each time someone
complains about the trolls. I think it was Einstein who described insanity
as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result each
time.

People who might like to participate in the photo groups don't necessarily
want to learn about newsreaders which support killfiles nor do they want to
spend a single second creating a killfile--they want to plug in their
Windows boxes, fire up Outlook Express, and do something interesting or fun
online. There's nothing wrong with that, in the least: These folks are
not lazy OR stupid, just different. To many of them, computers are tools
letting them pursue their own interests which likely don't include
computers, per se. Many of these people are knowledgeable about photography
but when they are annoyed by the trolls, then insulted and mocked by the
killfilers, they just simply go away, taking their potential contributions
to the photo groups with them.

All the killfilers are doing is encouraging a Darwinian selection process
which, if successful, will result in photo newsgroups in which the
participants know all about killfiles. Of course, that doesn't mean people
in the selected population will that much about photography, though--just
killfiles.

Truth is, usenet needs a technical overhaul to bring it into the modern age.
The system wasn't designed to prevent deliberate abuse because in the early
days of the internet and usenet there was no need to protect against abuse.
Not so today, obviously.