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Meh. In the 1990s I was active on a Usenet newsgroup for a science field. Initially, it was mainly academics who participated (and a few interested laymen like

Meh. In the 1990s I was active on a Usenet newsgroup for a science field. Initially, it was mainly academics who participated (and a few interested laymen like myself). But then the group began to attract cranks – and obviously mentally ill people – who claimed that they had all the answers and mainstream scientists were wrong. These cranks would post all day, every day, poking their nose into every thread, and eventually they drowned out most other discussions in the group. Killfiles didn’t seem to work. Even if you blocked a crackpot, one of the non-crackpots would still stupidly respond to him – a lot of people never understood “Don’t feed the trolls”. So you’d click on a post only to find out the discussion was people pointlessly trying to argue with the crackpot. The crackpot’s own posts might have been hidden, but everyone just quoted his posts in their own replies anyway. A few years ago, after someone somewhere claimed, like you, that Usenet is still healthy, I had a look back at the group to see what it was like: still dominated by those same crackpots.

u801e 9y ago
> These cranks would post all day, every day, poking their nose into every thread, and eventually they drowned out most other discussions in the group. > Killfiles didn’t seem to work. What I used to do was to killfile crossposts to certain groups, the trolls themselves, and subthreads started by the trolls. It worked reasonably well at the time.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago
  Yeah, I figured that there might be more power to killfiles than I knew about. Still, even if you block the cranks, all those non-killfile-using good people continue to pointlessly argue with the crank, and that poisons the group spirit and it drives people away. As a member of the community, you eventually suffer from the crank’s activity even if you don’t see his posts directly.
  - wahern 9y ago
    That happens, but it doesn't always happen. Some groups persevere while others succumb to the abuse. Usenet is still so huge that it's really not fair to write it off completely. Usenet, much like SMTP (but arguably unlike XMPP) built enough momentum before the abuse exploded that there's no reason it can't continue in perpetuity, even if individual groups might come and go. But unlike SMTP it's much more at risk of collapse if good people walk away unnecessarily.
pmyteh 9y ago
> A few years ago, after someone somewhere claimed, like you, that Usenet is still healthy, I had a look back at the group to see what it was like: still dominated by those same crackpots. Usenet's not really a single entity. I used it fairly heavily from about 1997-2005; most of the groups I read then are now either tumbleweed or overrun by spam. But a couple of them are still running along happily (if a little smaller than they were). So I think 'still healthy' is pretty contextually dependent.

u801e 9y ago

> These cranks would post all day, every day, poking their nose into every thread, and eventually they drowned out most other discussions in the group. > Killfiles didn’t seem to work. What I used to do was to killfile crossposts to certain groups, the trolls themselves, and subthreads started by the trolls. It worked reasonably well at the time.

Mediterraneo10 9y ago
Yeah, I figured that there might be more power to killfiles than I knew about. Still, even if you block the cranks, all those non-killfile-using good people continue to pointlessly argue with the crank, and that poisons the group spirit and it drives people away. As a member of the community, you eventually suffer from the crank’s activity even if you don’t see his posts directly.
- wahern 9y ago
  That happens, but it doesn't always happen. Some groups persevere while others succumb to the abuse. Usenet is still so huge that it's really not fair to write it off completely. Usenet, much like SMTP (but arguably unlike XMPP) built enough momentum before the abuse exploded that there's no reason it can't continue in perpetuity, even if individual groups might come and go. But unlike SMTP it's much more at risk of collapse if good people walk away unnecessarily.

pmyteh 9y ago

> A few years ago, after someone somewhere claimed, like you, that Usenet is still healthy, I had a look back at the group to see what it was like: still dominated by those same crackpots. Usenet's not really a single entity. I used it fairly heavily from about 1997-2005; most of the groups I read then are now either tumbleweed or overrun by spam. But a couple of them are still running along happily (if a little smaller than they were). So I think 'still healthy' is pretty contextually dependent.