From Newsgroup: comp.misc


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

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