Huge Planned Linux Migration Put On Hold! 4094

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Obviously, I can't "prove" it's "for pay" but I darn well know it's very "helpful" to certain commercial monopolies to sabotage support for their compebreastors, any way possible. I'll note my working observations.

My main evidence is the recent influx of Flatfish and clones-sockpuppets in the three main Linux groups I read (colm, aols, and al). After Novell bought SuSE, it seemed to really accelerate in aols. By "it" I mean very obvious (to me) addition of aols out of the blue to lousy advocacy rants in cola.

In short, Novell apparently "enhanced" the financial "threat" of SuSE.

Advocacy does NOT belong in a tech group like aols. OK, maybe there will be a brief flamefest (as anywhere in Usenet), but it's not typical.

Also, there were several driveby postings in aols whining about a bug or obscure glitch in Linux (especially SuSE) without ANY followup after the group responded with (mostly) very serious and useful tech tips. It just became a joke Flatfish et al were "at it again"--cluttering aols with an unending single-post potshot motif chasing ghosts, or fanning flames.

Again, I can't prove any of it's done "for pay" but the effect on anyone reading the groups is the same: there's nothing but ranting here. That's especially true for newbies to both Usenet and Linux. They don't know it is not representative of traditional Usenet tech support, or the quality of Linux support (for pay, or not) generally.

However, it seems less to have slowed newbies asking about Linux than to panic wintroll packs into even more FUD-flaming. We can only hope. :)

Personally, I think it's more a process of understanding Netiquette when posting generally. We all get caught in a crosspost ambush sometime. The newbies aren't the only posters with better things to do than police all the darn newsgroup lines. :)

I'll leave that to the FAQ folks to determine--it's their call, really.

This could be a cure worse than the disease. :)

Calling the wintrolls out and letting everyone decide for themselves has apparently been a reasonable tactic (to me).

I think plonking and proper Followup lines are a good compromise. It may confuse the newbies at first, but Usenet and Linux both seem to have the ability to survive the ranting nonsense, historically. :)

(Witness the odd chaos on the Linux kernel mailing list, as one example)

I haven't reported abuse to news providers in years--it seemed to become an increasingly time-consuming and contentious task to me. For example I used to try to keep misc.jobs.misc free of blatant repeated spam. But it got to the point where the group lost focus, and reporting pointless. If anything, most providers just didn't want to deal with it.

That's not to say I oppose it, of course. I just don't have time now.

Ah, Flatfish. How good to see you again. NOT. :)

-- Regards, Weird (Harold Stevens) * IMPORTANT EMAIL INFO FOLLOWS * Pardon any bogus email addresses (wookie) in place for spambots. Really, it's (wyrd) at airmail, dotted with net. DO NOT SPAM IT. Kids jumping ship? Looking to hire an old-school type? Email me.