Wolfpack Trolling 3889

In the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.misc, in article

My secondary ISP end off their own news server and went to Supernews several years ago for that very reason - and not having to put up with the bandwidth of a full Usenet feed, never mind the disk space. I liked them because they had a decent filter program that end off a lot of the really dumb spam, like Ponzi posts. I know they were also killing crap that was cross-posted to some of the more far-out groups, which reduced some of the troll contest posts.

I understand where he's coming from. Actually, there's a minor point in favor of the news server DSW criteria of "I got more groups than you do". With more groups, the kooks are spread out trying to cover the field, and that makes a lower average. If they cross-post, even to main line groups like comp.mail.misc, the spew is easier to filter.

Again, more areas mean lower average of kooks.

True - I used to have to do limited support of Novell Netware, and still subscribe to the comp.os.netware.* groups. As Netware died back, the posts in those groups dropped off. Now, it seems that the very limited number of articles (16 total for four groups thus far this month) are worth more than glancing at the subject lines.

Oh, I've got a few names in the file - about 360, but I also have whole domains in there.

I don't see to much problems that way - if the subject looks interesting, I tend to have a look. My time is limited, so the style of the posting and contents of the first portion of the first paragraph has to catch my attention. If it doesn't, the right 'windoze' key on my keyboard is aliased to "Next" in my news reader, and the "application" key is aliased to "Mark this group as read".

The only microsoft stuff I'm aware of having (home and at work) is a limited number of the older Dove Bar mice. There were a few of the ergonomic keyboards at work, but were soon swapped into storage, and may have been surplused.

Old guy