On Thu, 06 Nov 2003 20:49:18 -0500, Gene Kearns wrote:


Many (if not most) of these OT posts are made by non-boaters. They
may *own* a boat, but their boating is never discussed here. One of
the more arrogant of these idiots admitted he came here only as a
vandal and not to discuss boating. He freely admitted that when he
wished to discuss boating he went elsewhere. When he wanted to engage
in mischief, this is where he came.

That got me to thinking. I wonder if there is not a movement afoot
among some (consciously, or not) to attempt to disable rec.boats.

I believe that there are people who get some sort of personal
satisfaction from contaminating one or more popular ngs with
their childish garbage, so the ng(s) become unpopular. What
can be done about it if that's the case?

I
have no real answer for that, but it strengthens my resolve to ignore
these posts and forge on with what we should be discussing here.

That would probably be the only possible answer. But from what
I've seen they sometimes play the part of more than one poster
so it appears they always have someone else acknowledgeing
them, and they also attack new participants in an effort to run
them off as a basic technique in their attempt to destroy respectable
participation.

In
Agent, I just hit the round circle with a diagonal bar through it...
thread is ignored. Whatever you use for a newsreader, I encourage you
to learn about and use its capabilities to ignore inappropriate
threads. In some instances, killfilling a poster may be appropriate,
if they have never made a boating related post... and there are some
of those out there posting, now.

At any rate, again, the signal to noise ratio has reached the point
where we are losing posters.

Then they are being successful. It shows that just a few low
life scum can wreck things for a lot of decent people. Since so
few people would feel good about themselves for sinking to
such a level of unrespectability, what kind of terrible lives must
these few people have that makes them feel better about
themselves for doing things that most people would be ashamed
of doing? It's almost certain that they are begging for attention
at the expense of everyone else, in the same way a screwed up
little kid does it. They want to participate but have nothing to
offer, so they detract since that's all they are capable of doing.

I'm betting that if we forced the noise
back down to a whisper, the vandals would slink back to their
respective rocks, crawl under, and be quiet.

Think about it, the decision is yours.