[OT] Google Groups: vote for Default quoting

[John Bokma]

Beyond that, I trust that this time, just like every other time
there's been an infusion of idiots onto Usenet via an easily
accessible service, the people with a bit of smarts will realize that
they're being ignored because of their news host and pay the $10 a
year for news.cfn.de or some other news service.

Which exclude people working for a company that just firewalls some ports,
or if your Usenet server is down, and you have an urgent post to make.
(Been there).

 

[Tassilo v. Parseval]

Also sprach Alan J. Flavell:

Well, I'm sorry, but they've let this go on for too long to be able to
take them seriously. Asking for votes now is just a way of seeking
attention for their services, AFAICS. If they'd learn some basic
netiquette and promote it to their users, then they'd be in a better
position. It doesn't need votes to do that.

Furthermore, those default features to vote for sure are scary. Just
look at the first item: Photo/File storage.

Does that mean that at some point people are allowed to randomly attach
photos of their pets to usenet postings? Please, tell me this isn't so!

But their presentation, even if not overtly, strongly suggests to me
that they want to present the long-standing usenet newsgroups to their
users as if they might be Google's own proprietary discussion forums.
I can't be doing with that, so, with the exception of a few names
filtered specially, I'm filtering them below the visibility horizon of
my news client; therefore I no longer care that most of their users
haven't a clue about Usenet. The day's too short to read every
posting, anyway, so one has to apply *some* kind of selection, and
this happens to be one of mine.

If google posters were killfilled on a larger scale, google might
perhaps one day react because it'd mean that the usenet would be a much
less valuable resource to google posters: The cluefull people wouldn't
even see their posts.

Tassilo

 

[John Bokma]

If google posters were killfilled on a larger scale, google might
perhaps one day react because it'd mean that the usenet would be a much
less valuable resource to google posters: The cluefull people wouldn't
even see their posts.

It's not going to happen. Not enough people kill file, nor can you
convince them to do so otherwise.

If something bothers me I have two options:

close my eyes, and ignore it

or trying to change it

I go for the latter if possible.

Quite a few people I know made once a bad start (or several) on Usenet. I
am glad that they didn't get ignored when they did so, but got advice (and
listened).

I really hate when people think Usenet is for the 733+ h4x0rs only.

 

[Iain Chalmers]

Amateur. I toss their cookies! : )

#!/usr/bin/perl
#replace Firefox google cookie data with valid looking random garbage

use warnings;
use strict;

my $cf='~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/8c1vmb5.default';

if (open (IN,'<',$cf)){
@c=<IN>;
close IN;
if (@c && open (OUT,'>',$cf)){
while (@c){
do {print OUT $_;next;} unless /^.google.com/;
chomp;
s/(ID|TM|LM|S)=([^:]*)/$1.'='.rg(length($2))/eg;
print OUT "$_\n";
}
}
}
sub rg{
my $g='';
$g.=(0..9,'a'..'z','A'..'Z')[rand(61)] for (1..shift);
return $g;
}
__END__

run from cron every hour



big

 

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

If I want my (Usenet or email) messages to be read, I'd better make
_some_ own effort to make them not be mixed up with spam.

Imagine your Usenet server is down, and you have an urgent question do you

[a] nothing
use Google Groups?

Can't recall it ever happened. I either try to help, or participate in
OT threads like this. ;-) But, yes, I might be using Google.

Who else has that responsibility?
Both.

The reader decides, or don't I understand you?

Let me take a non-Usenet example: Comcast.net is one of the absolutely
worst spam sources out there; almost all messages originating from
Comcast that arrive to my tiny VPS (710 during approx. a month last time
I counted) are spam. Consequently I bounce all Comcast.net messages with
this link as an explanation: http://gunnar.cc/bounce/?d=comcast.net

The obvious implied message is: Use a serious provider if you want that
people read your messages.

 

[T Beck]

John Bokma wrote:
[snip]

Quite a few people I know made once a bad start (or several) on Usenet. I
am glad that they didn't get ignored when they did so, but got advice (and
listened).

I really hate when people think Usenet is for the 733+ h4x0rs only.

You've just moved about +10 positions in my book, here. I use Google
Groups for a few reasons:

1) I do all of my newsgroup reading at work, and it's available at work

2) While I appreciate reading the snippets of Perl tips and tricks, I
don't like it enough to spend the time auditing different software and
services to decide which program/service I want to pay for in order to
get back into a newsreader (I used to use one in the 90's.. for about
3 months... but I was young then, and didn't really need the info, so I
quit)

My first post on this forum was not formatted in a standard way, but I
attempted to quote the person to whom I responded by copy/paste, also
crediting them (didn't know about the handy options->reply)

So what happened? Sinan jumped on me calling me a "liar" because my
quote format was odd (not preceded by >'s, but I *thought* that it was
obvious, mea culpa), and then proceded to Ploink me. Now aside from
the fact that he's a killfile happy dude, this was a huge aggravation
to someone who was trying to get back into the swing of things.

I try not to flame anyone, I'm a pretty easy going guy, and I'm hoping
that one day this group might consider me a sort of brother-in-arms.
But people on usenet (and this group in particular) have a nasty
tendancy to flame anyone who is kind of new, or makes an early mistake.
A little nicety goes a long way. And certainly everyone on GG isn't a
moron, but many of us make stupid mistakes.

That being said, if you're killfiling me automatically... well, you
won't see this, but I feel worse for you guys. I catch lots of good
information on this group just by reading all the posts. Odds are,
(likely not me) someone on GG is bound to know something you don't, and
killfiling them automatically just means you won't get to learn from
them.

--T Beck

 

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

2) While I appreciate reading the snippets of Perl tips and tricks, I
don't like it enough to spend the time auditing different software and
services to decide which program/service I want to pay for in order to
get back into a newsreader

"Auditing different software and services"? There is plenty of free
software, and $10 a year doesn't motivate too deep investigations, does it?

Google does not provide its posting interface to Usenet in a serious and
respectful way. Why would I read posts from a provider that is not
serious? (Well, as you can see I do, since I'm not in the killfile
business. But I certainly don't blame those who are.)

 

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Ummm, why exactly?

If you don't understand that, your employer may be able to provide a
more tangible explanation. ;-)

 

[Richard Gration]

Yup being overly paranoid is healty

For certain definitions of healty

I could do without it myself ...

--
Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this;
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh;
Stop, traveller, and piss.
-- Lord Byron, on Lord Castlereagh

 

[Dr.Ruud]

John Bokma:

most spamfilters are very
sophisticated software that use a weighted score from many rules.

Only on the user level, not on the SMTP level. Always see at least 2
types of spam filters, like central and local, or external and internal.

Most spam is rejected directly after the envelope data is in (so the
message is actually never sent). Reverse-DNS can be one of the checks.
The number of recipients another. Greylisting another.

Some mail servers even reject connections at the port-level, based on
the IP-nr of the machine that wants to open a connection to port 25. For
this you need a firewall that can hold a large list of unwelcome
IP-ranges. It's even better to redirect the connection to a playful
server that tries to keep the sending server as occupied as possible.

So there might be many rules in spamfilters, but before those are used,
most spam is already rejected, with very simple rules, like a check of
the reputation of the mail server that wants to connect.

 

[Dr.Ruud]

Lars Kellogg-Stedman:

auto-plonking people because you don't like their
newsreader doesn't seem like a good way to keep Usenet a vibrant and
thriving community.

A message header shouldn't show the name of the posting agent. See for
guidance 4.2.2 in son-of-RFC-1036.

 

[Dr.Ruud]

Gunnar Hjalmarsson:

I bounce all Comcast.net
messages with this link as an explanation:
http://gunnar.cc/bounce/?d=comcast.net

"You appear to have sent a message via a mail server whose hostname ends
with comcast.net."

The 'appear' makes me wonder how you deduct that. Please don't trust the
HELO or the MAIL FROM, but check the actual IP-nr of the sending mail
server.

Bouncing has many meanings. I assume that you mean it as in RFC 2821
(where it has at least two meanings, the first is 'SMTP-reject').

554 Transaction failed (see http://gunnar.cc/bounce/?d=comcast.net)

Never 'bounce' after the message has been SMTP-accepted. In other words:
never compose a bounce message yourself. The bounce message should be
created by the server that tried to hand-over the unwanted message
(because of the 5xx you returned).

 

[Brian Wakem]

Google Groups let you vote for new features. Vote for default quoting:
<http://tinyurl.com/aqe6y>

"Default quoting of previous message in replies"

one above the last option.

(which goes to <http://groups-beta.google.com/support/bin/request.py?
contact_type=features> which wraps around in my client)

I think they should be issued a UDP until they comply.

 

[Alan J. Flavell]

Seriously, though -- auto-plonking people because you don't like their
newsreader doesn't seem like a good way to keep Usenet a vibrant and
thriving community.

Spending my time and effort reading followups that I can't understand
- because they're blurting out an answer to one point, - quoting and
citing nothing - and when one takes the trouble to refer to the
complete preceding post in the thread it's *still* impossible to work
out which point they're addressing; and ploughing through a whole
series of postings in which well-intentioned usenauts are trying to
educate GG posters to make themselves comprehensible, without having
much to say about the topic in hand; does not make for a "vibrant and
thriving community" in my world-view, I'm afraid.

 

[Alan J. Flavell]

Imagine your Usenet server is down, and you have an urgent question
do you

[a] nothing
use Google Groups?

If I have an *urgent* question, I would:

refer to the documentation
[ii] use a search engine.

Google has excellent search engines. It's a pity their gateway into
usenet is the way that it is, but the Usenauts have been grumbling
about it for long enough that if GG cared what the Usenauts think,
they would have done something about it. Instead, they give the
impression of hijacking Usenet for their own purposes[1]

I have done the latter in the past. Also note that some people using
GG do post useful replies, etc.

I don't think anyone is denying that. Each individual has to take the
decision whether they can spare the time to trawl through the dross to
find the occasional gem. My choice has been - like our network
administrator - that some sources have been set to "default deny".
There are other routes by which one can become aware that a particular
poster belongs in the exceptions list.

Now I really must stop getting side-tracked by this.

cheers

[1] Now who was it who said, in an analogous situation, something like
"I *know* what the Internet is for, and you shan't have it" ? I must
have misremembered the wording, because google can't find it.

 

[Matt Garrish]

[A complimentary Cc of this posting was sent to
Matt Garrish

Amateur. I toss their cookies! : )

Hmm, this looks like this (silly) advice of swapping the grocery
stores cards with your friends to hide you from the watch - in the
case you also use a credit card.

Nope, you're reading way too much into it. Just a play on tossing one's
cookies... : )

Matt

 

[Lars Kellogg-Stedman]

<...rant...> does not make for a "vibrant and
thriving community" in my world-view, I'm afraid.

And that's the attitude that makes me so disappointed. It's sticking
your head in the sand and ignoring the people who are going to be the
future of Usenet. It fractures the community in ways that are neither
helpful nor healthy.

If you want people to learn, you can't just cut them off. You *can*
provide helpful, friendly replies accompanied by suggestions to make
their next post better.

-- Lars

 

[John Bokma]

Either you make that post on behalf of your company, and then you
should have a case to have the hole in the firewall,

Or they tell you to use Google Groups, since there is no way they are
opening an extra port.

 

[John Bokma]

John Bokma ([email protected]) wrote on MMMMCDLXI September
MCMXCIII in <URL:}}
}} Imagine your Usenet server is down, and you have an urgent
question do you }}
}} [a] nothing
}} use Google Groups?
}}
}} I have done the latter in the past. Also note that some people
using GG do }} post useful replies, etc.


Isn't the standard response of this group to questions marked "urgent"
then Usenet is the wrong forum for urgent questions?

That's because how it's written. A message can still be urgent for the
sender, without attempting to push people to reply.

There is a difference between someone asking:

can you please help me?

or:

I need your help NOW!

 

[John Bokma]

Spending my time and effort reading followups that I can't understand
- because they're blurting out an answer to one point, - quoting and
citing nothing - and when one takes the trouble to refer to the
complete preceding post in the thread it's *still* impossible to work
out which point they're addressing; and ploughing through a whole
series of postings in which well-intentioned usenauts are trying to
educate GG posters to make themselves comprehensible, without having
much to say about the topic in hand; does not make for a "vibrant and
thriving community" in my world-view, I'm afraid.

How many people posting here *not* using Google Groups get it right?

Fill in the blanks

__% doesn't quote properly
__% asks a question that's in the FAQ
__% asks a question that is answered by entering perldoc -f
__% are postings that attempt to correct behaviour
__% are replies to trolling
__% are flame wars
__% are off topic


and then wonder: what am I *doing* on Usenet...