"Art Todesco" wrote

| After years of reading this NG, and reading all the junk here, and
| making filter after filter in Thunderbird, there is nothing left! I
| think I filtered everything to the point that the NG is now pointless!

I gave up some years ago and just stopped by
recently, in case anyone might need real help.
But it's got much worse than I remember it. It's
not just the junk posters. It's also the regulars
going off-topic, bickering about politics, and
competing over who knows more handyman trivia.

It's a shame. Usenet is such a great resource, but
a handful of tech newsgroups are pretty much
the only ones I visit anymore. For reasons I
don't understand, most people are far more likely
to post to commercial websites that are difficult to
read and require membership.

I was recently reading Reddit for the first time
because I wanted to follow a particular issue.
What a mess that is! Lots of people who just
want to argue or say their piece. And the site
supports it by allowing posts to be "upvoted".
It's discussion by mob rule. At least on usenet
there are no moderators and no "voting". (Where
there are moderators, such as the Mozilla groups,
the group itself ends up being little more than a
marketing channel for the product. Say something
critical in a Mozilla group and it probably won't
even show up.)