Re: How to deal with Crosstraffic.

From: N A Sides (nas_at_sonic.net)
Date: 09/10/04 

Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 22:19:34 GMT

Until everybody gets around to agreeing that s.a.p. should be
moderated I'm just going to take both David's and your own advice and
killfile him. Until now I've never killfiled anyone but Ed and
Jabriol, but somehow it seems appropriate that Sienkiewcz should join
his long-time opponent there. Sorry again for all the disturbance. I'm
not much good at being contrite, but I'm trying. BTW, I think you're
the only person who was able to figure out just from the headers that
I was UCG. In his apology to you, David referred to "new evidence
coming to light," but that evidence was there all along. He just
straight couldn't figure it out.

NAS

On 10 Sep 2004 21:19:31 GMT, Philip Deitiker <Nopdeitik@att.net.Spam>
wrote:

>For right now there are/were rules in place governing
>crosstraffic between s.a.p. and t.o. These rules were placed by
>the T.O. last year as an unspoken compromise following last
>summer's war. The basic juxt of these rules is that without
>rules the T.O. participants could flood over here and Xpost the
>hell out of this group. There was, at that time, a 4 group
>limit, and now it is a 2 group limit. Eventually, I think (hope)
>the 2 group limit will be accross the board for talk.origins.
> Roughly speaking each crosspost to s.a.p. from t.o. will be
>followed up in s.a.p. only, there is a 2 group limit. This is in
>line with our charter. Anything beyond that DIG sees as a
>violation of the charter. By and large the result, I believe is
>tolerable, even though there will be annoying periods.
>
> It is the basic attitude of talk.origin participants to
>create a mess, and to create a bigger mess when challenged about
>creating a mess with them, in other words they are not
>emotionally competant to deal with public critique. Action only
>tends to come with full out challenges to the operation of the
>group, as I did last summer, resulted in the temp-ban of several
>individuals. The groups is 'self-professed gang of howler
>monkeys' and thier attitudes are generally incompatible with
>sci. groups. I ask for DIG to extend this 'restriction' to other
>groups, but unless members of those other groups do not bring up
>their charter issues he will not. I personally don't think
>xposting between t.o. and ceratin sci groups, like s.anth, is a
>problem given the nature of these groups. IOW if you have a
>problem with xposting and off-topic material it is better to
>'quote' from the charter when making a point and really make
>sure that the xposting is outside of the general behavior of the
>group.
>
> I, personally, have removed the crossgroup filters from s.a.p.
>as they are no longer neccesary for my own use. You can,
>however, use those yourself. Nfilter is an excellent addition to
>Agent and it will remove from the actual headers (not the header
>sample) groups that are crossposted to annoying groups, like
>talk.origins. In fact nfilter can turn free agent, effectively
>into agent.
>
>here are my filters for groups.
>
>"
>sci.anthropology.paleo drop Newsgroups:*alt.*
>sci.anthropology.paleo drop Newsgroups:*talk*
>sci.anthropology.paleo drop Newsgroups:*misc*
>sci.anthropology.paleo drop Newsgroups:*atheism*
>sci.anthropology.paleo drop Newsgroups:*religion*
>sci.anthropology.paleo drop Newsgroups:*smithsonian*
>sci.anthropology.paleo drop Newsgroups:*rape*
>sci.anthropology.paleo drop Newsgroups:*legal*
>sci.anthropology.paleo drop Newsgroups:*alien*
>sci.anthropology.paleo drop Newsgroups:*skeptic*
>sci.anthropology.paleo drop Newsgroups:*soc*
>sci.anthropology.paleo drop Newsgroups:*culture*
>sci.anthropology.paleo drop Newsgroups:*geo*
>sci.archaeolog* drop Newsgroups:*alt.*
>sci.archaeolog* drop Newsgroups:*talk*
>sci.archaeolog* drop Newsgroups:*misc*
>sci.archaeolog* drop Newsgroups:*atheism*
>sci.archaeolog* drop Newsgroups:*religion*
>sci.archaeolog* drop Newsgroups:*smithsonian*
>sci.archaeolog* drop Newsgroups:*rape*
>sci.archaeolog* drop Newsgroups:*legal*
>sci.archaeolog* drop Newsgroups:*alien*
>sci.archaeolog* drop Newsgroups:*skeptic*
>sci.archaeolog* drop Newsgroups:*geo*
>"
>
> We have several members of this group who crossover from
>talk.origins. Wilkins is one, McDonald is another and these
>individuals 'generally' (snorting at McD with a devilish grin on
>my face) contribute in a positive manner. This is to say members
>of t.o. do not always act like howler monkeys, and while the
>critique is just we need to be tolerant for the exceptions. Also
>Dr. Shaffner occasionally posts here. If you want professionals
>to post here you have to respect their rights to crosspost to
>groups they deem important. I myself crosspost, and I have no
>problem xposting between sci. groups or history groups if the
>matter of discussion is on topic. For example right now we are
>talking about the evolution of freemasonry in europe (history
>medieval) and its connection with the KRS(archaeology)
>
> There is nothing you can do about post not crossposted between
>t.o.(or other moderated group) and any sci.group, as J@b and #d
>C0NR@D are fond of doing, nothing other than filtering them. As
>they are posting between groups without moderators. I have
>scanned the post of Scienkiewicz in talk.origins and most of his
>recent post are, indeed, not crossposted. In fact there has been
>a vast improvement (lowering) of the xposting:non-xposting ratio
>in talk.origins. I would like to think that _we_, in our efforts
>last year, had an impact on this, and I would also like to think
>that the reforms in place maintain that effort. In fact we have
>had typcially 2 or 3 episodes per year, in the last year we have
>none that were demostrably episodes. The fact that Jabriol is
>complaining is a good sign that they are working.
> In addition, I, nor any one person here can change the
>charter, if we all get together we can draft a new charter with
>stricter limitations on xposting, and then one could use these
>changes to request change from talk.origins moderator. However
>one has to remember that our restrictions are virtually
>meaningless to other unmoderated groups, and the only way they
>can possibly have meaning is if we create a new moderated group.
>If this is a goal I will go along with such a charter provided
>that it allows xposting to other sci.* and history groups.
>However I should point out that the only change charter change
>that is likely to benefit us is if the post does not have a
>followup set to s.a.p. the post we be autofollowed in
>talk.origins, this will shrink some of the traffic. Banning all
>crosstraffic between t.o. and s.a.p. is more or less a violation
>of the intended ethos of the UseNet. And some of our membership
>comes here via t.o. so it is a group maintaining porthole.
> We can add a moderated group, and there are times when I have
>felt this was the thing to do, but short term problems have
>always resolved themselves in a positive manner (a few
>exceptions have evolved slowly), and we do not have to worry
>about one person blocking post he/she does not agree with.
>Sci.archaeology.mod is an example of moderated groups or our
>caliper, and I should note that yahoo groups are far more useful
>than UseNet groups in this regard.
> Which is why I am reluctant to complain to their moderator. In
>the current episode, as typical and expected that some of the
>rank-and-file of talk.origins had a knee-jerk response to an
>anonymous post. The reasoning is just, however, the execution is
>flawed, as a matter of fact I commented in talk.origins about
>the increased level of crossposting several days ago. Everyone
>here knows that this type of crossposting is annoying, only that
>folks in talk.origins never seem to think they are the problem,
>however the "we" in 'UCG' post is understood by most s.a.p.ers.
>The flaw in execution is anonymous posting and a reason why
>anonymous posting in disrespected in sci.groups. The basic
>problem is that talk.origins members shoot first and ask
>questions later, it is rather 'newbian' but nonetheless certain
>members carry on this activity even into their old age and it
>will not change, this is the basic nature of the group (or at
>least has been the historic behavior). Unless you are going to
>pull out all your guns I do not recommend pulling out a water
>pistol to challenge them.
> Filter them first, and if that does not work then challenge
>them but carry that charter in hand and give them fair warning.
>I think the current rules as they stand are sufficient, but if
>you think someone is willingly trying to subvert the rules and
>it specifically involves talk.origins take it to the moderator
>with a politely worded complaint first, at least when they
>attack you have a trail of what you have done. Don't create one
>subversion to deal with another unless your full intent is to
>piss them-the-hell off. And if this is the intent it will go
>nowhere unless you establish some kind of strategy, more or less
>a-denial-of-service attack which threatens to send the group
>off-line and make the moderators have to work extra hours to fix
>you (i.e. ban all your various encarnations).
>
>S.a.p. has a charter, read it and learn to use it.
>
>I should remind everyone that back in the early period of this
>group C0nr@d came in and dam near finished off this group, the
>potential for doing so is 10 times greater today than in 1996.
>J@bs tried to do the same back in the late 90's. Every groups
>traffic has grown, but topic specific chatter here is only 30
>post per day or so, and we can be easily overwhelmed by nasties.
>The biggest single threat to s.a.p. is from the enourmous
>traffic from t.o., at around 1000 post per day, any change in
>the posting patterns toward xposting can hurt this group, as we
>have seen in the last few months. However try to work within the
>rules, or we will have to shread common decency to get this to
>stop (as what I was preparing to do). I should point out that I
>suffer the majority of personal attacks last year to get these
>rules, and apparently that bile has not dried from their tongues
>yet. I am prepared to do what I did again, in fact more
>prepared, however pulling out a 'usenet atomic bomb' and using
>it are 2 different things, once you use it, it will not work so
>well on subsequent occasions. The problem with using in in
>talk.origins is that the moderator, for all his <whatever> and
>simply turn off all bots and let all hell break loose. This does
>not benefit us either, in fact it would destroy this group.
> I should point out that crossposting is not bad, there are
>several groups that need more traffic and interest.
>Sci.archaeology.mesoamerican, sci.language, sci.paleontology
>(under limited circumstances) and sci.archaeology. There are
>even occasions that sci.history and soc. groups are acceptable
>to crosspost to, and would increase the interest in this group
>if undertaken. IOW think when you post what groups might be
>appropriate, sometimes it requires removing newsgroups and
>sometimes adding newsgroups. Self isolation is not good for us
>either, and this is an opinion I have changed in the last 2
>years at the advise of the 'powers' in the News.Groups.
> While the folks in News.Groups will entirely make fun at you,
>if you have a complaint about rude behavior flowing from a
>particular group it is often useful to bring it to them, they
>can exert some peer pressure on the moderator to reform,
>moderators tend to be a part of their cliche. More or less 'hey
>[moderator] I know this is none of my business by geeze you have
>this capacity and geeze why don't you use that capacity to stop
>this rude behavior.' It is often better to present an unresolved
>problem there, first, and let it trickle back to the moderator,
>than to create an all out flame war in a group, that the
>moderator has to deal with. You might also consider CCing a copy
>of your complaint to him and crossposting to the Usenet abuse
>group.
>
>As Scienkiewicz eluded to, filtering is the way to go. A general
>lack of interest gets rid of most xposters.
>
>Here is an example of my killfile for XNEWS, which
>I used to post but don't because of past complaints.
>
>"
>[^sci\.]
> % generated by Xnews on Thu 02 Sep 2004 10:09:54a
> Score:: -9999
> From: jabriol1@excite\.com
> From: jguy@alphalink\.com\.au
> Subject: Talk\..rigins
>
>
>[^sci\.anthropology\.paleo$]
> % generated by Xnews on Mon 19 Apr 2004 11:02:43a
> Score:: -9999
> From: nmm1@cus\.cam\.ac\.uk
> From: fa204466@skynet\.be
> From: tftn@earthlink\.net
> From: Use\-Author\-Address\-Header@\[127\.1\]
> From: david\.sienkiewicz@attbi\.com
> From: citizens@citizen\.com
> From: trigby@multiweb\.nl
> Subject: rigins
> Subject: Atheists dying
> Subject: Jabfilter
> Subject: Usenet
> Subject: masturbat
> Subject: TOBS
> Subject: T0BS
> Subject: Hsu
> Subject: PZ
> Subject: Kemp
>"
>
>Note that Jabs replaces certain characters like "O" with #"0" so
>when you create a filter you may need to tinker to get it right.
>
>If you are posting from google or other groups without a reader,
>get a ISP with a bonafida usenet provider, and use a reader,
>Xnews is free, Free agent is free and Nfilter is free. learn to
>use them.

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