Gary L. Burnore wrote:

(Crossposted to news.admin.net-abuse.usenet, news.groups,
alt.privacy.anon-server, alt.internet.search-engines,
alt.censorship)

>Once bush is out of office, that destruction will stop.

I don't know if you noticed the newsgroups line in your reply,
and I certainly understand the temptation to reply to off-topic
posts, but you should be aware that people who reply to such
crossposted off-topic posts often end up killfiled.

My personal policy is to differentiate off-topic responders
into four groups:

Group One (includes the person I am responding to):
Usually or often posts valuable, on-topic material.  My response
is to politely ask that they not respond to crossposted off-topic
posts.  In this particular case I am explaining this at length
for the benefit of any newbies that are lurking, but the phrase
"Please don't feed the Troll" is the most common form.  If the
person keeps doing it, I killfile him.

Group two:
Usually non-responsive to polite requests, but may be reachable.
My response is to killfile that person with a response post
containing the phrase "*plonk*"

Group three:
Known to respond to polite requests with abuse.  My response is
to silently killfile that person.

Group four:
Trolls.   My response is to silently killfile that person,
responses to that person, and threads that that person has started.

I advise others to follow the above policy; the responses I give to
groups three and four are part of the Standard Advice.  There is
some disagreement as to whether the responses I give to groups one
and two help more than they hurt, but I only give the responses once,
so it can't be an ongoing problem either way.


--
"Usenet being what it is, if you participate in newsgroups
at all over a period if time you have the possibility of
attracting your own personal lunatic, who considers any
disagreement a personal affront, and considers it their
duty and obligation to "expose" the person they fixate on.
It's kind of pathetic, but they can't quite seem to figure
out why no one else sees their actions as heroic."
-Richard Ward

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]