Gravity newsreader - good anti-troll defences

I'm surprised I still see so many indignant replies to trolls, or even posts
about specific trolls. Trolls just want attention, so any attention feeds
them.

I use Gravity (http://mpgravity.sourceforge.net/). It has a "bozo bin"; when I
right-click a post and add the author to the bozo bin, I have it configured so
all their posts are marked "read" (and so are not seen) for 365 days.

If a reply to a trolling thread appear, if the respondent is particularly
annoying they go in the bozo bin too, but in any case tapping 'I' (Ignore)
marks the entire thread plus any future replies as read - and so I don't see
them. That's really useful.

So don't be tempted to encourage these damaged people. See if you have
comparable facilities in your own newsreader, or, if not, try Gravity! It's
old-school (last stable version 2010!) but it works really well!


--

Phil, London

On 8/14/2020 4:30 AM, Philip Herlihy wrote:

I'm surprised I still see so many indignant replies to trolls, or even posts
about specific trolls. Trolls just want attention, so any attention feeds
them.


Yes! Trolls should be killfiled rather than replied to. As you say,
replying feeds them the attention they want.

I understand the temptation to reply, and that's one of the reasons they
should be killfiled--not seeing the messages removes the temptation.



I use Gravity (http://mpgravity.sourceforge.net/). It has a "bozo bin"; when I
right-click a post and add the author to the bozo bin, I have it configured so
all their posts are marked "read" (and so are not seen) for 365 days.


Almost every newsreader has killfiling capability, even if it goes by
different names in different newsreaders. I use Thunderbird, and its
killfiling capability works fine.



If a reply to a trolling thread appear, if the respondent is particularly
annoying they go in the bozo bin too,


Same here. I hate to do that since sometimes the responders' other posts
are valuable, but if they don't stop, they get killfiled too.


--
Ken

Philip,

I use Gravity (http://mpgravity.sourceforge.net/).

The way you describe it it sounds like a newsgroup reader of which there are
13 in a dozen. Heck, my 20 year old OE6 already does the same.

The problem is that its not only the blacklisted persons posts that will
draw you in, but also seeing other people reply to them quoting parts of
such blacklisted messages.

A good addition would be to automatically suppress replies to suppressed
(for whatever reason) posts. That way you would not see the blacklisted
persons rambing directly or indirectly by responders referring to them
and/or quoting parts of such blacklisted posts.

I know it works for me.

It also does away with the bad choice you have to make when an otherwise
helpfull member tries to communicate with such a blacklisted person. He
than only gets suppressed in regard to that one thread/branch.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

In article , lable says...


A good addition would be to automatically suppress replies to suppressed
(for whatever reason) posts. That way you would not see the blacklisted
persons rambing directly or indirectly by responders referring to them
and/or quoting parts of such blacklisted posts.


Thinking through the implications of what you suggest, I think on balance that
would be useful. At present I'll occasionally see a troll (or grossly OT) post
when someone replies, but the Ignore Thread option means I don't see further
replies.

I guess there's a risk of "false positives" when someone adds a comment in the
wrong place in the tree - which does happen.

Does any newsreader offer this?


--

Phil, London

On 8/14/2020 8:57 AM, R.Wieser wrote:

Philip,

I use Gravity (http://mpgravity.sourceforge.net/).

The way you describe it it sounds like a newsgroup reader of which there are
13 in a dozen. Heck, my 20 year old OE6 already does the same.


As I said, they almost all do.


The problem is that its not only the blacklisted persons posts that will
draw you in, but also seeing other people reply to them quoting parts of
such blacklisted messages.


Alas, yes.


A good addition would be to automatically suppress replies to suppressed
(for whatever reason) posts. That way you would not see the blacklisted
persons rambing directly or indirectly by responders referring to them
and/or quoting parts of such blacklisted posts.


Yes, that would be wonderful.



I know it works for me.


It also does away with the bad choice you have to make when an otherwise
helpfull member tries to communicate with such a blacklisted person. He
than only gets suppressed in regard to that one thread/branch.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser




--
Ken

On 8/14/2020 9:45 AM, Philip Herlihy wrote:
In article , lable says...


A good addition would be to automatically suppress replies to suppressed
(for whatever reason) posts. That way you would not see the blacklisted
persons rambing directly or indirectly by responders referring to them
and/or quoting parts of such blacklisted posts.


Thinking through the implications of what you suggest, I think on balance that
would be useful. At present I'll occasionally see a troll (or grossly OT) post
when someone replies, but the Ignore Thread option means I don't see further
replies.


The problem with "Ignore thread" is that there might be other messages
in the thread that are not replies to the troll, and that you *do* want
see. That's why I don't use it

--
Ken

On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 08:03:04 -0700
Ken Blake wrote:

I use Gravity (http://mpgravity.sourceforge.net/). It has a "bozo
bin"; when I right-click a post and add the author to the bozo bin,
I have it configured so all their posts are marked "read" (and so
are not seen) for 365 days.


Almost every newsreader has killfiling capability, even if it goes by
different names in different newsreaders. I use Thunderbird, and its
killfiling capability works fine.

As far as I know, Thunderbird won't filter on a phrase in the headers,
and that's what you need to do if you don't want to see trolls.

There are two trolls I don't care to ever see. That would be Good Guy
and Arlen Holder. I just filter on mixmin.net in the headers, and they
are both gone, and if anyone replies to them, I don't see the replies
either, because mixmin.net is picked up in the headers of the one
replying.

Claws mail is available for Windows 10. I admit it's hard to set up,
and learn to use the processing rules, but it's worth it, and it can be
made to look like Thunderbird.

Ken Blake wrote:
The problem with "Ignore thread" is that there might be other messages
in the thread that are not replies to the troll, and that you *do* want
see. That's why I don't use it

IMO, (which differs from most)...

- I don't like the word troll because its meaning has been expanded so
far, too far IMO, that the original meaning is lost, and its 'current'
too broad meaning is fuzzy/obscure
- Perhaps some would have the term mean 'he who posts msg/s I don't
like' (to see)
- I do agree that people who are easily 'agitated' and who are prone
to reply to 'trollish' (by some metric) msg/s in an inflamed and
unpleasant way (like the instigating msg) should find some way to stifle
themselves which 'invisible-izing' such inciting msg/s would do
- a little bit of off-topicality or 'topic drift' is going to happen;
some 'flavor' in a technical/help group isn't altogether bad
- for many who want to 'filter', it might be sufficient to mark some
msg/s as 'read' but not to hide read msg/s; in that manner, some 'read'
msg/s might be easily read, depending on the thread's 'context'

--
Mike Easter

On 14/08/2020 06:09 pm, Johnny wrote:
On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 08:03:04 -0700
Ken Blake wrote:

I use Gravity (http://mpgravity.sourceforge.net/). It has a "bozo
bin"; when I right-click a post and add the author to the bozo bin,
I have it configured so all their posts are marked "read" (and so
are not seen) for 365 days.


Almost every newsreader has killfiling capability, even if it goes by
different names in different newsreaders. I use Thunderbird, and its
killfiling capability works fine.

As far as I know, Thunderbird won't filter on a phrase in the headers,

It can. Message Filters/Message Filters/New
Click Subject and choose Customise

and that's what you need to do if you don't want to see trolls.

There are two trolls I don't care to ever see. That would be Good Guy
and Arlen Holder. I just filter on mixmin.net in the headers, and they
are both gone, and if anyone replies to them, I don't see the replies
either, because mixmin.net is picked up in the headers of the one
replying.

Claws mail is available for Windows 10. I admit it's hard to set up,
and learn to use the processing rules, but it's worth it, and it can be
made to look like Thunderbird.




--

Chris Elvidge, England

On 8/14/2020 10:09 AM, Johnny wrote:

On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 08:03:04 -0700
Ken Blake wrote:

I use Gravity (http://mpgravity.sourceforge.net/). It has a "bozo
bin"; when I right-click a post and add the author to the bozo bin,
I have it configured so all their posts are marked "read" (and so
are not seen) for 365 days.


Almost every newsreader has killfiling capability, even if it goes by
different names in different newsreaders. I use Thunderbird, and its
killfiling capability works fine.

As far as I know, Thunderbird won't filter on a phrase in the headers,


I agree. That's right, as far as I know.



and that's what you need to do if you don't want to see trolls.



But no, I don't want to do that. As I said in another message, I don't
necessarily want to filter the entire thread. The problem is that there
might be other messages in the thread that are not replies to the troll,
and that I *do* want to see.


There are two trolls I don't care to ever see. That would be Good Guy
and Arlen Holder.


There are many others (some in other newsgroups) whose messages I also
never want to see, but those are good examples. They're both killfiled here.



Claws mail is available for Windows 10. I admit it's hard to set up,
and learn to use the processing rules, but it's worth it, and it can be
made to look like Thunderbird.




I looked at Claws a few months ago, and decided against using it. I
can't remember why.

--
Ken

On 8/14/2020 10:26 AM, Chris Elvidge wrote:

On 14/08/2020 06:09 pm, Johnny wrote:
On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 08:03:04 -0700
Ken Blake wrote:

I use Gravity (http://mpgravity.sourceforge.net/). It has a "bozo
bin"; when I right-click a post and add the author to the bozo bin,
I have it configured so all their posts are marked "read" (and so
are not seen) for 365 days.


Almost every newsreader has killfiling capability, even if it goes by
different names in different newsreaders. I use Thunderbird, and its
killfiling capability works fine.

As far as I know, Thunderbird won't filter on a phrase in the headers,

It can. Message Filters/Message Filters/New
Click Subject and choose Customise


You're right. I had forgotten about that when I wrote the reply I just
sent. Probably the reason I forgot is because I don't want to do it for
the reason I just explained in that other message.



--
Ken

On 8/14/2020 10:17 AM, Mike Easter wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:
The problem with "Ignore thread" is that there might be other messages
in the thread that are not replies to the troll, and that you *do* want
see. That's why I don't use it

IMO, (which differs from most)...

- I don't like the word troll because its meaning has been expanded so
far, too far IMO, that the original meaning is lost, and its 'current'
too broad meaning is fuzzy/obscure


I agree with you, but I use the word anyway, since I don't know of any
other word that would be understood.



- Perhaps some would have the term mean 'he who posts msg/s I don't
like' (to see)
- I do agree that people who are easily 'agitated' and who are prone
to reply to 'trollish' (by some metric) msg/s in an inflamed and
unpleasant way (like the instigating msg) should find some way to stifle
themselves which 'invisible-izing' such inciting msg/s would do
- a little bit of off-topicality or 'topic drift' is going to happen;
some 'flavor' in a technical/help group isn't altogether bad
- for many who want to 'filter', it might be sufficient to mark some
msg/s as 'read' but not to hide read msg/s; in that manner, some 'read'
msg/s might be easily read, depending on the thread's 'context'



I always hide read messages in every newsroup, even those where I have
nobody killfiled. I want tosee only those message that are unread. Have
them all there, and it would double how long it took me to get through
the list. As far as I'm concerned, there's no advantage to showing all
the messages; it just clutters up the list.


--
Ken

Philip,

At present I'll occasionally see a troll (or grossly OT) post
when someone replies, but the Ignore Thread option means
I don't see further replies.

The /whole/ thread ?

The pleasant thing about the "ignore replies to ignored posts" is that you
can selectivily ignore bad branches of an otherwise good thread.

I guess there's a risk of "false positives" when someone adds a
comment in the wrong place in the tree - which does happen.

:-) As the above method only affects a particular branch of the tree that
doesn't happen.

Does any newsreader offer this?

Offer what ?

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

Ken,

A good addition would be to automatically suppress replies to suppressed
(for whatever reason) posts. That way you would not see the
blacklisted
persons rambing directly or indirectly by responders referring to them
and/or quoting parts of such blacklisted posts.

Yes, that would be wonderful.

There are no newsgroup readers that do that ? Amazing. I would think it
would be a bit of a no-brainer.

But yes, I know. I should have made the changes to enable that behaviour
long ago.

Than again, normally the dislikable/disruptive posters only lasted for a few
short weeks and than faded away. Until rather recently ...

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

In article , says...

On 8/14/2020 9:45 AM, Philip Herlihy wrote:
In article , lable says...


A good addition would be to automatically suppress replies to suppressed
(for whatever reason) posts. That way you would not see the blacklisted
persons rambing directly or indirectly by responders referring to them
and/or quoting parts of such blacklisted posts.


Thinking through the implications of what you suggest, I think on balance that
would be useful. At present I'll occasionally see a troll (or grossly OT) post
when someone replies, but the Ignore Thread option means I don't see further
replies.


The problem with "Ignore thread" is that there might be other messages
in the thread that are not replies to the troll, and that you *do* want
see. That's why I don't use it

In my experience it's quite rare for a post which started about Trump, or
Brexit, or whatever, to veer into discussion of Windows 10!

--

Phil, London