On 2013-10-24 09:46:08 +0000, Martin Brown said:

On 24/10/2013 10:32, yttiw wrote:
On 2013-10-24 06:51:23 +0000, Robin Nicholson said:

On 23 Oct 2013 19:26:39 GMT, "Norman" wrote:

My sentiments exactly, Graham. I don't know what all the fuss is
about. I don't
see any of the trash. This place is fine for me.

I agree too BUT the one thing I truly miss is useful commentary from
ex Met office chaps who live down here not too far from Dorset.

Naturally i do look around usually with my morning first tea but my
personal interest is aroused when the weather becomes more dynamic.
I do prefer one screen where I can spot anything of interest quickly,
thus matching my work where as an overloaded schoolmaster I have to
spot the good from the bad ( et al) from dawn to dusk, at some speed.

I suspect that what I consider the lower echelon of posters will move
away in time. It is really quite scary how much time they have. IIRC
there was a time some 4-5 years ago when someone fairly regularly
posted pages and pages of almost Biblical text: at the time I asked
the poster if he/she was really typing this up for hour after hour.

R

Hilton

Yes, it does seem a shame that the nastiness and name calling has ruined
this group. It used to be a great source of information.

A well crafted kill file will remove the handful of worst offenders if
you really don't want to see their posts.



Yes, I do make use of killfiles, but that does not seem to stop people
drifting away from a group because most discussions end up in abuse,
name calling, and worse.

Not only that, but Google Groups seems to have muscled in on Usenet and
does seem to attract trolls more than ever, (not to mention the
many-line-feed specialists).

Maybe it is just a sad reflection on society these days - aided and
abetted by a rather ignorant media, who exaggerate any event to
extremes and encourage people to take more and more polarised
positions? There seems to be no middle ground where even-minded folk
can debate a complex subject.


I have wondered if it would be possible to start another group, but
moderated this time - maybe called uk.rec.weather, uk.sci.meteorology
(or something similar). However, it seems that the set up procedure is
long winded and rather cumbersome, and moderation would lose the
instantaneous effect of weather reports of severe conditions, unless
there was some way of getting around this.

I don't see a moderator as an editor, just a person who disallows posts,
or replies, which contravene the newsgroup rules. So, all allowed posts
would remain unaltered, but ones that tried to make any kind of personal
comment about another contributor would not get through the system.

Unfortunately, approvals for moderated Usenet groups are all too easy
to forge so you don't get much benefit and you always get delays

My belief is that once people realised that they could have a grown-up
discussion, or argument, or ask for simple answers to questions that
they never understood, without getting any abusive comments, they would
most probably drift back. Or maybe I am being just too naive and/or
optimistic?

A bit of both. The computer chess fraternity had to move to a moderated
and by invitation only web forum based platform after political and
other abusive threads swamped out the good posts. The rot set in at
about the time when hipcryme flooding was the trolls abuse of choice.

The sci.astro groups have gone the same way - basically the Usenet
groups there are infested with flat Earthers, Einstein deniers and
people with NEW THEORIES OF THE UNIVERSE who have yet to discover how
to use CapsLock. Their posting always entirely in capitals is helpful
for killfiles if you can kill on subject line and have regex matching.