4 ms·

I wish we would just resurrect usenet newsgroups. I like the idea of open protocols

• e40 4y ago
  Ah, yes, the place where trolls had free reign. comp.lang.lisp is a good example. Xah Lee and others. It was just too much, so I had to stop reading it. There were other newsgroups that had serious trolls, too.
  • tux1968 4y ago
    Isn't it easier than ever to filter such comments yourself? If it isn't, it should be. That lets everyone speak, allow researches and other interested parties to look at the entire spectrum of discourse, and for each of us to maintain our focus and sanity as well.
  • InitialLastName 4y ago
    I had to unsubscribe from sci.electronics.design; the s**posting over politics out-massed the electronics design discussion 100:1 (and wasn't even entertaining, just the same 3 people blowing each other up).
    • palebluedot 4y ago
      That actually sounds pretty ideal. Add 3 people to your killfile, and you've removed most of the noise!
      • slyall 4y ago
        That was the problem. The regulars had killfiles to filter out the problem users and topics but somebody new just saw lots of junk (and if they posted the trolls would be the first to reply). Thus nobody new joined the groups and they stagnated. I quit Usenet 20 years ago and if I look at them now some of those same trolls are still around. Or they have migrated to facebook/twitter.
        • twiddling 4y ago
          having Michael Vandeman flashbacks
        • javajosh 4y ago
          It is such a small improvement to simply share a killfile with new users. And it doesn't have to be a "bare" killfile - it could come with links to the posts that earned their place in it, if you were skeptical (and to avoid the inevitability that trolls would try to killfile the regulars in this way)
          • ninkendo 4y ago
            It’s an interesting thought for how to implement “distributed moderation” for a Usenet-derived (maybe something sitting on top of Usenet) discussion platform. “Moderation” can be implemented by a cohort of likeminded people by sharing and maintaining a kill file, similar to how mods on a subreddit determine who to ban. But they only are effectively “banned” for the people to trust that cohort and agree with their decisions enough to “subscribe” to their kill file. Don’t like that they banned too many people you want to hear from? Fork their kill file, or subscribe to a different cohort’s kill file. Make the UX good enough and it may be possible to satisfy the “free speech” absolutists as well as the people who want a well-moderated platform without trolls.
            • slyall 4y ago
              Pretty sure this sort of thing was proposed a few times. On the simpler scale People would even make pieces of killfiles you could copy. But like I said the problem was the new people. They'd open up the group see 90% junk and not bother going any further.
        • NetOpWibby 4y ago
          So trolls just…persist? After DECADES?! This is extremely demoralizing.
    • RajT88 4y ago
      Political shitposting is a problem everywhere. Even in things like Facebook groups which largely replaced the forums I used to be on. The lower barrier to entry, and the larger and more diverse audience mean for some of these facebook groups, the mods actually tell members to knock it off. So then those folks create a separate chat for the shitposting mixed with the original content. Just what I have seen anyways. A few forums manage to be quite prolific still (like the BoingBoing bbs).
  • snickerbockers 4y ago
    xah lee might be a troll but at least he did a good job documenting emacs lisp on his website. i've learned more from him than i ever did from the official emacs manual (by which i mean <C-h r>).
    • hollerith 4y ago
      C-h r documents how to use Emacs and has very little about Emacs Lisp in it, which is the purview of (info "(elisp)").
    • e40 4y ago
      This is so true. I ran across it a year or so ago when I was doing some complex elisp stuff. Loved it.
  • icedchai 4y ago
    The trolls were what made it fun. At least Usenet put "moderation" in the hands of the end users, in the form of kill files.
  • javajosh 4y ago
    Client tools had a solution: the killfile. This elegant, distributed solution to trolling has somehow not been reinvented in other forums. It's odd, really.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      Ignore lists and block lists exist, though they often have the weakness of not ignoring replies.
• hkt 4y ago
  Content moderation on usenet was and still is an unsolved problem. Fediverse stuff is a bit saner as it has more controls available, albeit is less forum-like