On 9/17/2008 9:10 AM RicodJour spake thus:

On Sep 17, 10:34 am, wrote:

On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:27:18 -0400, Kurt Ullman
wrote:

In article ,
wrote:

Go to AIOE.org as one example. You don't even have to sign up or
register. Just use it.

And if one wants to waste large amounts of time and needs to satisfy
one's masochistic urges, there is always Google Groups.

Many users filter out all posts that originate from google groups...
and for good reason. The bulk of them are spam and trolls. If you want
to be a full fledged participant in an active newsgroup, don'r use
Google. You will have a much smaller audience.

I always get a kick out of post such as this. I've been mucking about
on Usenet since ~1994. I've used several different means of getting
to them, different providers, readers, etc., and I really don't have
any major issues with Google Groups for access. I fully understand
the loathing for spam and trolls, and Google does a pretty reasonable
job of filtering out the spam without any of my help (there are some
groups that are worse than others, and there was that notable
onslaught of spam from half a year back). The trolls are part of
Usenet and sometimes it's tough to tell the white hats from the black
hats. I killfile very rarely as a little kid screaming doesn't bother
me unless I can't close the door. Usenet is a closed door - you have
to open it to be enlightened or annoyed.

Actually, my beef with googlegroups (and that of many others) has little
to do with "trolls", which as you say seem to abound on Usenet in
general, but more with the ****-poor implementation of news access that
Google cobbled up in its web-based approach.

Just to give one example, their software allows users to edit their
posts after they've been made. Now, this works fine on their interface:
they just update their database, and presto change-o, the post is
updated. But "real" Usenet users see two messages: the original one plus
the edited one.

Not to mention the tons of spam generated through googlegroups. I'm
surprised at your assertion that they do "a pretty reasonable job of
filtering out the spam", but I guess I'll have to take your word for that.


--
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

- Paulo Freire