A possible solution to the trolling problem on this news group

wrote:
The trolls, if that is what they are, don't really bother me. None of
them has been abusive and like you say, they can be amusing from time
to time. The only bad side is their attack on Guy Chapman, but even
then, he isn't bothered by them either. In time they will get fed up
of posting pointless messages in a dusty old part of the internet and
find something more constructive to do.

Nope. While people keep replying, they will keep posting, attention
is oxygen to the troll. Well, I guess after 3 score years and 10
they'll stop, but then so will I

I'm of the opinion if you don't want to read troll posts, then, well,
don't; and if you dont want to read troll feeder posts, yep, you've
guessed it.

Rudi wrote:

Hi! (and sorry for the long post)

There's a simple answer. Post articles about bikes and discuss bikes.
Ignore other posts ...

Trouble is, and what's happened, is that cycling as such, and the
discussion of cycling 'problems' is a political 'thing' that people
need to discuss, which generates polarisation and therefore animosities
develop, _exactly_ like the road system. If everyone stuck to the
rules we'd all get along better. I don't think there's much you can
practically do other than my first line ..

--
Paul - xxx

'96/'97 Landrover Discovery 300 Tdi
Dyna Tech Cro-Mo comp

On Fri, 8 May 2009 04:52:55 -0700 (PDT), Rudi
wrote:

Hi! (and sorry for the long post)
snip


Yes count me in.

I like to comment on many aspects of cycling.

I do find the personal attacks a bit too much - sometimes I feel
obliged to respond - like with like if you see what I man.

Can I propose Guy Chapman as Chief Moderator and Snipper Smith as
second in command - they are both very fair and balanced people - with
no axe to grind.

I don't think Bilbo can actually think for himself - so perhaps not to
involve him.

Clinch would be a good moderator - but he would only be able to do it
during working time at the University - but he seems to have loads of
that free.

Anchor would be trying to ban every post unless it had a legal
component - so I would not recommend - he's not very bright either.

Yes go for it.

(here's a quid it never flies)


--

"Primary position" the middle of a traffic lane. To take the "primary position" : to ride a bike in the middle of the lane in order to obstruct other road vehicles from overtaking.

A term invented by and used by psycholists and not recognised in the Highway Code.

Highway Code Rule 168 : "Never obstruct drivers who wish to pass."

On 08 May 2009 14:48:16 +0100 (BST), David Damerell
wrote:

Quoting Rudi :
In other words the new news group would provide a filtered version of
urc.

You'd only get a lot of troll-feeding. I think you'd do better to RFD
urc.moderated.


Many of the posts here which people now object to would be allowed in
a fairly moderated group.

I think we should stick as it is.

I quite like it as it is now. Some people read posts and respond;
some people read posts - disagree with what you have said - but can't
respond because you are in the kill-file; and others actually use a
kill-file.

Why are there so many people in here who can't just think and act for
themselves?

--

"Primary position" the middle of a traffic lane. To take the "primary position" : to ride a bike in the middle of the lane in order to obstruct other road vehicles from overtaking.

A term invented by and used by psycholists and not recognised in the Highway Code.

Highway Code Rule 168 : "Never obstruct drivers who wish to pass."

Rudi wrote:


A) One response would be to moderate urc. Although this would probably
sort the problem for the majority there are disadvantages to this:

URC cannot be moderated , it is a non moderated NG, if the want
Uk.rec.cycling.moderated that would be a different group

1) not every one wants urc to be moderated
2) some people actually enjoy engaging with the trolls (actually it
can be quite fun winding them up, but it does damage the news group)
3) in addition to the people who don’t like moderation on principle,
there are possibly so many motoring trolls (and I’m sure the ones
there are could call on others from certain transport related groups,
and/or adopt multiple identities) that I’m not sure it would be easy
to get a moderation call through

B) An alternative response is to just start up an alternative
moderated news-group. This however runs the risk of splitting the
cycling community into those on one group and those on another

So is there some way of leaving urc unmoderated while still somehow
enabling people who want to to essentially see a moderated version?

I think it would be not too hard to write a program that would run on
an appropriate server that did the following:

1) read in all messages posted to urc
2) run these through a filter which passed some, kill-filed others,
and passed some through to human moderator (note this does not affect
anyone's view of urc itself)
3) sent the messages passed either by the filter or the human
moderator through to another new news group
4) Anything posted directly to this new group would also go through
the same filtering/moderation process
5) Anything that gets through this moderation/filtering process would
also be sent automatically to urc, unless it originated there (since
it would already be there!)

It is my understanding of the way that Usenet is constructed, as a
decentralised self healing system, that your suggestion wouldn't work.

Doug wrote:
On 8 May, 14:05, wrote:
On 8 May, 13:22, "Jackbike" me@somewhere wrote:

I, for one would like my cycling newsgroup back please. Count me as
interested.
Yea, it would be good to talk about bikes on a cycling newsgroup for
once!!

I don't want to be a wet blanket but my experience has been that
USENET, like the world at large, has become infested and dominated by
motorists who, now that they are under extreme pressure from the
environmental lobby, are having to try to justify their chosen mode of
transport. Part of their justification seems to be trying to rubbish
cleaner forms of transport such as cycling while embracing polluting
forms of transport such as flying.


My experience is that the only "motorists" that come here to justify
anything are here answering you. If you dissapeared so would they.

On Fri, 8 May 2009 06:58:25 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

The trolls, if that is what they are, don't really bother me. None of
them has been abusive and like you say, they can be amusing from time
to time. The only bad side is their attack on Guy Chapman, but even
then, he isn't bothered by them either. In time they will get fed up
of posting pointless messages in a dusty old part of the internet and
find something more constructive to do.


But you should ask yourself why do people dislike Chapman so much -
and why does Chapman like to keep things on the boil - as I keep
pointing out when he does. Even Snipper Smith has him in his
killfile.

Why not just filter out all posts which have the word Chapman in them.

Job's a good 'un.

Perhaps some people are not abusive to you because you are polite and
not abusive to them even when you disagree.

And of course the direction of the abuse determines whether you are a
troll or not.

Were the people who abused Johannes labeled as trolls? - No - why not?
- part of the clique.



--

"Primary position" the middle of a traffic lane. To take the "primary position" : to ride a bike in the middle of the lane in order to obstruct other road vehicles from overtaking.

A term invented by and used by psycholists and not recognised in the Highway Code.

Highway Code Rule 168 : "Never obstruct drivers who wish to pass."

"Paul - xxx" writes:

Rudi wrote:

Hi! (and sorry for the long post)

There's a simple answer. Post articles about bikes and discuss bikes.
Ignore other posts ...

I don't actually think there are enough people left on the group who are
interested in posting about cycling and informed enough to say anything
useful. I've pretty much given up on this place as a resource for
anything vaguely technical: web forums and twitter have eclipsed it.
Ian's post illustrates why - whereas on usenet we apparently need an
objective and bulletproof moderation policy, a centralised web forum
acts according to the whim of its owner who can make things up as he
goes along

(Some forum owners are better than this than others, and if you don't
like one then you simply find another)

If you'd told me five years ago I'd be recommending web fora on usenet
I'd have laughed at you ... sigh


-dan

Marc wrote:
Doug wrote:
On 8 May, 14:05, wrote:
On 8 May, 13:22, "Jackbike" me@somewhere wrote:

I, for one would like my cycling newsgroup back please. Count me as
interested.
Yea, it would be good to talk about bikes on a cycling newsgroup for
once!!

I don't want to be a wet blanket but my experience has been that
USENET, like the world at large, has become infested and dominated by
motorists who, now that they are under extreme pressure from the
environmental lobby, are having to try to justify their chosen mode of
transport. Part of their justification seems to be trying to rubbish
cleaner forms of transport such as cycling while embracing polluting
forms of transport such as flying.


My experience is that the only "motorists" that come here to justify
anything are here answering you. If you dissapeared so would they.
He's right Doug. What you do here will not advance the cause at all
because you're talking to cyclists on one hand and people that you've
antagonised and irritated for a number of years on the other. Have a
long, hard look and see if you've had a positive effect on the culture
of this group and then make up your mind what you will do about it. I
don't need to tell Judith or Nuxx that I think they are a destructive
influence, but I feel the need to tell you because, when all is said and
done I think that your heart is in the right place. Just give the
polemic a rest please.

"I want sprocket-talk and I want it NOW!"

Roger Thorpe

On 8 May, 17:11, Marc wrote:
Doug wrote:
On 8 May, 14:05, wrote:
On 8 May, 13:22, "Jackbike" me@somewhere wrote:

I, for one would like my cycling newsgroup back please. Count me as
interested.
Yea, it would be good to talk about bikes on a cycling newsgroup for
once!!

I don't want to be a wet blanket but my experience has been that
USENET, like the world at large, has become infested and dominated by
motorists who, now that they are under extreme pressure from the
environmental lobby, are having to try to justify their chosen mode of
transport. Part of their justification seems to be trying to rubbish
cleaner forms of transport such as cycling while embracing polluting
forms of transport such as flying.

My experience is that the only "motorists" that come here to justify
anything are here answering you. If you dissapeared so would they.

I think many people (not Ian Jackson, although I still think it offers
benefits over just having a separate moderated group) are
misunderstanding my proposal. I am not proposing to moderate urc. I
would leave it exactly as it is now. Anyone posting to urc would have
their messages appear on urc as now, and anyone replying to posts on
urc would be able to just as now. What i am proposing is to have a new
news group which *automatically* gets copies of the posts which appear
on urc and filters them so that the new news group only displays a
subset of the messages which are on urc. The new news group can also
be posted to directly but these messages would a) go through the
filtering mechanism before being made publicly available on the new
group
b) be posted to urc.

So at all times the new group would have a filtered (read moderated)
subset of the messages on urc.

This should not lead to fragmentation of the cycling community since
urc readers would see *all* the messages that readers of the new group
see. Readers of the new group would see a selected subset. If they get
concerned that they might be missing something they can always read
urc.

My hope would be that at least one forum would be free (perhaps not
completely at all times but 99% say) of the kind of pointless time
wasting off-putting stuff that currently makes up, and might well
still continue to make up the content of urc. Furthermore should
something slip through into the new group it could be killed off by
the moderator(s), have new stuff added to kill files, disallowed
posters etc. As I said, if anyone decides they don't like this they
can always go back to urc without losing anything since anything on
the new group would be there too.

I agree that (as far as i know) no-one has done anything like this
before. In fact if the software could be set up to do this I think
quite a number of newsgroups might benefit from it.

Rudi