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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: How to keep idiots, slime, males & ETs from dominating net.women
Message-ID: <172@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Aug-85 01:05:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.172
Posted: Wed Aug 28 01:05:35 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Aug-85 05:45:52 EDT
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 43

It's really very simple.  Just IGNORE THEM.

I'm serious.  One of the real advantages of the net over face-to-face
communication is the ease with which one can ignore people.  (Ever
try to ignore a jerk at a party or in a classroom?)  You are NOT
required to read, much less respond to, every article that appears in
a newsgroup.  

One reason that so many netnews articles are written by idiots and
jerks is that the non-idiots and non-jerks respond to their articles.
Some net-posters write articles simply in order to get a response of
some kind (Ken Arndt is the master at this).  If you reply to such a
person, you gratify his wish and encourage a repeat performance.
Clinical psychologists can explain this better than I can.

To save wear and tear on your n-finger, rn makes it possible to
filter out all articles from someone whose articles you are not
interested in reading.  I am trying to weed out all articles from
persons whose mental, emotional, or chronological age I estimate at
less than 7 years.  If, say, Ross Greenberg's articles raise your
blood pressure, you don't have to read them.  (I don't want to be
hard on Ross -- perhaps he is an extremely gifted third-grader who
has access to his father's or mother's terminal, something I have
suspected of a good many netters, especially the ones who whine about
women wanting "special treatment.")

I understand that net.women.only met an untimely demise.  However, I
don't understand why this had to happen -- the readers of that
newsgroup might have simply ignored articles from persons who
violated the spirit of net.women.only, and eventually those persons
would have figured out that they were talking to themselves.  

Any woman who wants net.women to become a net.women.mostly or a
net.women.only or a mutual-support group for women can achieve this
right now by ignoring articles from confessed males or anyone who
violates what one thinks should be the spirit of net.women.  If you
do this, I guarantee that you won't see any complaints about it from
those persons, unless they send you mail, which you are also free to
ignore.

Ignore 'em, folks.  Do it because it FEELS GOOD.

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes