>Nah. If you've actually have used the (non-binary) Usenet, you have certainly come across plonks [1] and killfiles. As I said in my initial comment, I am well

>Nah. If you've actually have used the (non-binary) Usenet, you have certainly come across plonks [1] and killfiles. As I said in my initial comment, I am well aware of killfiling (And why are you distinguishing between "plonks" and killfiles? At most, a plonk is a public announcement of putting someone in one's killfile.)—i.e., client-side anti-spam/anti-bad behavior tools—and server-side tools for similar purpose. >What killed Usenet is that the shiny new WWW was more attractive for new users (and easier to use than a newsreader). I don't disagree that WWW is more attractive and easier to use than Usenet; the resulting flood of individual forums of course seriously affected Usenet traffic. (In turn Twitter, Facebook, and especially Reddit have mostly killed off the individual forums.) I nonetheless believe that misbehavior—quite possibly because of mental illness—and not spam is the major problem for Usenet today. Spam is, while still a problem, something both familiar and impersonal. But when entire newsgroups are taken up by mentally deranged individuals fighting their imagined grievances against others, participating in on-topic discussion is that much more difficult, and because said individuals often change their From: lines on the fly killfiling them is all the more difficult as well.