OS/2 eZine - The Best OS/2 Reading Anywhere!

16 July 2001

Robert Basler is the president of Aurora Systems, Inc. and a dedicated OS/2 user since he tired of rebooting Windows 3.1 twenty times a day.

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Bad Behavior

If you spend time reading Usenet News, specifically the comp.os.os2.* newsgroups, you might come to think that OS/2 users are a bunch of crazies. While people have long expected a lot of pointless arguments in comp.os.os2.advocacy, a lot of crossposting to comp.os.os2.misc has made what has traditionally been an excellent resource for help, discussion and news, just another huge pile of junk to sift through when you're looking for something to read.

Don't misunderstand, most of the people who post in the OS/2 newsgroups are OS/2 users looking for and providing help. It is unfortunate that a small number of posters are producing such a huge volume of pointless invective and overwhelming other worthwhile content.

A Taste was all I needed...

It was nice a few months ago when the flamewars in comp.os.os2.misc were temporarily suspended in memory of Dan Casey's passing. For a few days the discussion was fast and pleasant, covering a wide range of topics, but soon the flamers were back with their personal attacks and nonsense arguments. This brief respite was all I needed to know that something needed to be done.

The Price We Pay

Probably the biggest price we pay as OS/2 users for these flamewars is the perception of OS/2 users as lunatics. Anyone who comes to the newsgroups looking for help and spends any time reading is going to be put off by all the nonsense. OS/2 users are unfortunately represented by the people in newsgroups, both good and bad. New users are certainly not going to spend time looking for solutions there, they'll just move on to something else and that's a loss, both for them and for us.

What can we do as a community?

The best thing we as an OS/2 community can do is simply try not to respond to the nonsense posts. It can be difficult when many posts contain blatant misinformation and insults, but ignoring the nutcases is the only way to get them to go look for attention somewhere else. When I was a kid, my mother taught me to ignore children if they teased me and she was right, eventually they get bored and move on to someone who reacts to their taunts.

If you don't think you can resist responding to the nonsense, you could also add filters to your newsgroup settings for posters who constantly produce this junk. I am certainly an advocate of free speech and I am strongly opposed to censorship, but at the same time, there's no law that says I have to listen to everyone either.

Message Filters 101

This month I went through comp.os.os2.misc looking at the posts by each author. If the author's posts were mostly name calling and pointless argument, I added a filter for them. By the end, I had added just four filters. Interestingly enough, nearly every post I found that was a waste of bandwidth was also crossposted to comp.os.os2.advocacy. It would be nice if there was a newsreader that could filter messages based on whether or not they are crossposted.

In Netscape 4.61, message filters are on a per-newsgroup basis, so it is easy to control what you see in individual groups. Sometimes the people who produce lots of posts in one group also answer questions and provide help in others.

Once you have a newsgroup open, click on Edit|Message Filters, then click on new, enter a filter name, click the "Match any of the following" radio button, then change the filter so it reads "The sender of the message contains {name} then Delete" and then enter the name the offending poster is using in that newsgroup and click on OK.

Afterwards, any new messages downloaded from that person will not show up in the list of messages, although messages received before the filter was added will still remain.

Please Watch the Cross-Posts

If you're going to reply to flamewar posts, the first thing to do is look at the newsgroups that you are posting to when you reply. If you are writing an advocacy post and non-advocacy groups are listed in the newsgroups to post in, just delete them.

We Want our Newsgroups Back

It is very disappointing to me that measures are required to get people to behave in a civilized manner and that people online act so much worse than they would in any other public place. Unfortunately, the internet is a medium open to anyone, and some people will abuse it for their own entertainment.

The OS/2 community doesn't have to pay the price for their amusement, please help us get our newsgroups back, just don't respond.

[Any opinions expressed here are those of the author, and are not endorsed by, or necessarily representative of the opinions of, his employer or the OS/2 eZine.]

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