Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!brahms!weemba From: weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) Newsgroups: net.news.adm,net.news.sa Subject: Re: The REAL problem with USENET Message-ID: <14075@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: Sat, 31-May-86 02:14:54 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbvax.14075 Posted: Sat May 31 02:14:54 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 1-Jun-86 08:42:47 EDT References: <324@andromeda.RUTGERS.EDU> <14049@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <327@andromeda.RUTGERS.EDU> Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: weemba@brahms.UUCP (Matthew P. Wiener) Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 117 Keywords: vendetta Xref: watmath net.news.adm:764 net.news.sa:326 In article <327@andromeda.RUTGERS.EDU> dave@andromeda.RUTGERS.EDU (Dave Bloom) writes: >> Do I smell a VENDETTA? 50% is rather *good* for net.jokes ... >> And 50% is a rather typical quoting level in many newsgroups, ... >> ... Do I smell a rat? > >Obviously Mr Weemba is suffering from paranoia. ... I know of several posters who have or had vendettas against me, including perhaps one of the students(?) at your machine. One more vendetta would not surprise me. > ... I don't even read net.jokes. Ah good! We have a basis for an intelligent discussion. :-) >But as a system administrator I see the traffic that passes through my >machine, and after having perused our news spool I noticed a number of >flames/100 line quote articles directed at or posted by Mr Weemba. Can you tell the difference between a flame and humor? I have not flamed in net.jokes for quite a while, nor did I ever do so in any noticeable quantity, nor read very many flames against me. >Weemba is my example, as I stated in my posting, not the whole problem. >But his PRACTICES, as well those by those like him are a major CAUSE of >the problem. What do you think of my comments about sheer volume of net users? >>> This is not the first time this person has posted mega-line quote postings >>> to this newsgroup, nor is he the only one. >>... >> you or the student involved happened to overlook the 90+% quoted >> material examples in net.jokes, ... > >No... It's not a coincidence. Net.jokes is a heavily posted-to newsgroup, >and of those posting to it it seems that Weemba is the worst cause of flame >generation/re-hashing. I think that is because I went for the punsters' jugular some time back, causing maximum outrage, so now they like to poke pun at me back. Forgive me, but I had to make the try. And I have received lots of mail telling me that my efforts were the funniest thing they had ever seen in net.jokes. The latest weemba flamage in general is not bothersome to me personally, and I believe most of it qualifies as (weak) humor, based on context. That is, if you've been following net.jokes all along, much of the antiweemba flames (but not all) are funny, if only weakly, but if you just read them in isolation, as you claim you have, then of course they look stupid. In the end, though, no one expects quality from net.jokes in the first place, so I don't really know why you keep hitting at that group as an example of the REAL problem with USENET. > If PEOPLE LIKE HIM would rely on e-mail, ... Woo! So how do we decide when things are better for e-mail? What is the criteria for something being worthy of public notice and something not? Just what is the purpose of all these newsgroups in the first place? For your information, I do do a lot of my discussions via e-mail. Not that you would notice, of course. Also, I apologize for my last posting in this group, not for the posting itself--I'm incorrigible--but as you are now changing your tune as to what the problem is, my comments are now inapplicable. Before you said it was multiline quoting, and mentioned my awful 50% quote rate. Now it's the flame game itself you don't like. But as I said before, I believe you and I disagree on just what constitutes a flame in the first place. ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 ------------------------------------------------------------------ As a postscript, I will mention two examples that I can't believe you overlooked as something to call the REAL problem, not that I believe that your complaint about net.jokes qualifies as the REAL problem in the first place. These particular ones may have been too recent for your actual article, but looking through net.jokes article by article at any time gives things far far worse than the one you mentioned. First there is article <283@oucs.UUCP>, which quoted my entire article <14003@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, all 126 lines of it, the one with the 50% quote rate, in order to give a four line complaint that *he* didn't find it funny, and then he gave a three line joke to "protect" himself. I don't see how or why I'm potentially responsible for other people's senses of humor or lack thereof. Second, I include the latest running pun, just in case you overlooked this sort of stuff. It was unrotated in the original, so be warned. 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