Trolls was: Vote to change groups.google default reply style

Alan Connor

I don't read the articles of "Walter Mitty", which means that I don't read any responses to them either.

That means I haven't read a single one of those articles and never will. They have not been downloaded and therefore will not be stored in the local newscache I read from.

But I'm sure that "Walter Mitty", like all trolls, believes that I am secretly reading his digital diarrhea.

Any rotten child with their mommy's computer can post anything they want on the Usenet.

And any jerk can feed the creeps by responding to their articles.

What they can't do is make me read any of it.

The new slrn offers the best troll control available: True offline reading.

I never read online. Between my newsreader, slrn, and the Usenet, is my local, caching newsserver, slrnpull. That's what I read from and post to. When it retrieves new posts from the Usenet it only brings down the headers unless I specifically tell it to do otherwise.

(I also use a local filter, procmail, to further screen the headers after they've been downloaded and before I bring slrn up to examine whatever has survived.)

On today's Usenet, you are a guilty until proven innocent: There are just too many creeps with multiple accounts on various ISPs and NSPs posting under dozens or even hundreds of aliases.

With one alias they abuse you or just pollute your favorite newsgroup, and with another they ask you for help.

Sorry. I'm fed up.

At this point, I'm leaving about 98% of all new articles on the Usenet server.

Which is good, because it saves a lot of bandwidth.

Anyone who doesn't like how I do things can write their duly-elected representative, who is a LOT more interested in their opinions than I am. Although they probably won't read your articles either.

Alan