On Fri, Jun 08, 2007 at 08:44:12AM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>
> Why not block it before it ever hits the lists?
I guess the problem is that it's not exactly spam, so you'd need an
AI engine to figure out what it was and block it.
It actually is, as near as I can tell, a bunch of people who are
convinced that emm-eye-five are out to get them. The reason Usenet
became worthless is not just that October never came, but that the
metal hospitals all got hooked up to it. Every nutbar freak in the
world thinks it's their holy duty to cross post to all of creation.
To add insult to injury, those who are opposed to this sort of
nonsense forge posts from the above people and cross-post _those_ all
over hell and creation. This was a favourite tactic some years ago
by self-appointed guardians of Usenet. The idea was that if you
pissed off the cabal enough, they'd take action of some unspecified
type which would solve the problem in a way that nobody was ever able
to quite explain. It was never anything better than vigilantism, but
now it's just vandalism.
Anyway, I guess we'll just keep moderating and hope the failure to
get past moderation will cause the paranoid nutbars and their
antagonists to go somewhere else. Some days I hate the Internet :)
A
--
Andrew Sullivan | ajs@crankycanuck.ca
The fact that technology doesn't work is no bar to success in the marketplace. --Philip Greenspun
