"Steve B" wrote in message
...

"Robert Green" wrote in message
...
"David Nebenzahl" wrote in message
.com...
On 6/26/2010 5:35 PM Stormin Mormon spake thus:

There are some posters who consistently provoke, rude, or insulting,
or confrontational, or just no useful content. It's much easier to
plonk, than to have to delete the messages every day.

[all previous contents of thread lost because of Stormy's totally
nonstandard posting method]

It looks like only one message got "derailed" - and what's with META?
Call
it what it is, OT, or you risk being thought of as a US Terrorist
Control
Network Designerwith Code Oranges, Blues, Pinks, Yellow with Purple
stripes,
light green and blue dots, etc. K.I.S.S.

What do you mean "delete the messages"? This is a newsgroup--you can't
delete anything.

Delete or mark as read, it's the same thing. David, you're a smart guy
and
I agree with you on a wide range of subjects, but you're running the
risk
of
being what my Army bud calls "a needle dicked bug raper" meaning someone
who's obsessing over very tiny things with less than honorable
intentions.

Using the letters OT at the beginning of the subject line says "I am at
least respectful enough of my fellow posters to make the effort to add
two
stinking letters to my OT posts." What's wrong with being considerate?
I
find nothing wrong with trying to make it easy for the OT-adverse to
avoid
creating filters to work around that which they do not wish to see.
Although I come down now on the OT's "right to live" I was not always in
that camp. I am well aware that having to scan over unrelated crap
really
does bother people and wastes their time. Worse, it puts them in a foul
enough mood to bite the heads off newbies when perhaps they didn't mean
to.

So much good can come out of being respectful enough of others to use OT
at
the beginning of a subject heading that I can't imagine why anyone
*wouldn't* do it. Your couple of keystrokes can save others a hell of a
lot
of frustration and the need to make dozens of "N" pushes for NEXT. It's
a
bother, a very legitmate bother, and one with an absurdly simple
solution.
If the OT-adverse complain even after OT threads are religiously marked,
then the crown of "needle-dicked bug raper" can be put on *their* heads.

--
Bobby G.

There are a lot of political and social dick heads around here who have
good
info on home repairs. But when they post stuff and not mark it OT, I tend
to delete their submissions. (Notice I did not use the P word.) So, some
valuable help and information is possibly lost. But when I come here, I
don't want to sift through all the debris to find the nuggets, and when
people mark OT OT, it surely helps, it keeps their credibility, it keeps
them on my screen, and it doesn't get them labeled as some spewing loony.

My two pennies, anyway.

Steve

From what I can gather, there's a great variation in the newsreaders people
use and how they use them. I would guess that some of the more prolific
posters read every new post as it comes in, without grouping messages by
threads. Others read entire threads or mark them as read if they don't like
them. It's a bitch to read chronologically and trip over dozens of
unrelated messages.

I can also see why people, especially in my silver-haired demographic, need
to block certain people to keep their blood pressure within safe ranges. I
haven't seen too much of that here, but I do remember that it was pretty bad
when "This is Turtle" was posting. It was also far more active - too
active - you couldn't read all the messages unless it was your full time
job. The great ISP screwjob newsgroup access actually brought this and
a few other groups down to mangeable size, although it killed off most of
the low volume ones.

I'm sympathetic to those who just want AHR related topics and will probably
tone down my contributions to OT threads just because it's mostly people
talking past each other. I worry, that as a country, we've lost our ability
to make mutual compromises. Reminds me of my knee joint telling me "I used
to be flexible, but not any more." Is it what happens when countries reach
certain age? Is that when all the insoluble problems cake up like grounds
in a coffee cup?

I enjoy intelligent, OT conversations because it helps me learn more about
the people here and just like marbling in beef or grain in wood, a little
contrast is a good thing. I think some OT posts inspire people to keep
checking the group and they answer legit questions when they check in. I
just wish more people could "hold their water" and not get so damn nasty,
but that's cyberspace.

Thanks for your input!

--
Bobby G.