Mark (mark@coombs.anu.edu.au) sed
Maybe it's not in the spirit of this mailing group but
Seems on topic to me.
what of the question of purposeful abuse of the anon mailers/newsposters? Say for instance some person posts either a sh*tload of garbage to every known group, flooding the USENET...
Tim May and Fen Labalme have given good replies. I hate the sloppy setup of the internet/usenet/netnews/mailing-lists in general. The way things are gives anarchy a bad name, and I think they could use a good hosing off--if only that would mean they would get cleaned. Unfortunately the way people react to abuses is often just to add extra patches. Take "kill files," which Tim mentions. The thing I hate about that term (even more than that they're lists of people to "kill,") is that they're after-the-fact. Here's this mail that keeps pouring into my mailbox, and every day my robot has to find and burn the 90% that even a robot can be taught to recognize as junk. Prompt, temporary STUPID relief of symptoms. (I mean, while I'm at it, I hate the broadcast-and-filter model of netnews, CD ROMs, and cable TV. I want things available for me to go fetch.) That kind of filtering has a place, but I like more positive-reputation, positive-interest models. Like subscription mail groups. Also, I understand that Fido users have to pay their own transport charges. I don't know if that applies to the "echo" groups, but it should...Mr. Jennings?...because that's another natural kind of filtering against network hosing. You can flood my mailbox if you pay me enough.
or a more personal attack whereby they send out anonymously information that was so fundamentally personal to someone they could possibly react very badly....
What if someone posted some top secret information and the various three letter acronyms all went out for someone's blood.
I guess these won't happen much, just judging from how much they happen now even though they're not that hard to do. But sure, they'll happen. It would be nice if people learned information-hygene lessons like skepticism and protecting privacy, and accepting-life lessons like accepting what does get revealed about oneself and others...(whistful grin). More like, people will learn if we teach; things will change if we change them. Scary issues are good educational material when used right, especially when you can say, "This is stupid and it can be *fixed* and we can use your help." -fnerd quote me...within *reason* of course fnerd@smds.com (FutureNerd Steve Witham)