| -=-+-=+-=-+ The FAQ on FAQ Thumpers, Cyberstalkers, Control Freaks and Self Appointed Usenet Cops +-=-+-=+-=- |
Unknown |
| memories (meow@meowww.org) |
2009/08/30 06:59 |
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From: hopper <Troll5layer@home.invalid> <-- Resident Stalker
>Look at me.. no .. I mean _look_ at me.
==========================
"THE FAQ ON FAQ THUMPERS" by MACV
______________________________________________________________________
In my years of computing experience which began back in the
days of the Coleco Adam, I've had the pleasure of meeting many
helpful folks who shared my love for these wonderful machines that
have changed our lives so much. I've had the privilege of running my
own BBS for many years and then I made the transition to being in on
the ground floor of one of the first ISP's in my area. During my
years of experience online I've always found that a certain
personality type kept turning up regardless of what online venue I
was using. As a BBS sysop, there were always a few people who wanted
to "help" me run my board. Once the Internet became a household
word, I started noticing the same types of "helpful" people popping
up in just about every newsgroup I'd examine. Unlike those who
irritated me on my BBS though, since these folks had no sysop to tell
them their "help" was unwanted, they became emboldened and completely
abandoned the facade of trying to be "helpful." Thus, emerged the
FAQ Thumper.
Thus, also, came the need for this FAQ.
This FAQ will most likely contain a lot of omissions, so I
hope that its readers will feel free to add to it as time goes on.
Unlike the FAQ's that the FAQ thumpers regard as their Holy Grail,
feel free to fold, spindle and mutilate this document as you see fit.
NOTE: This FAQ applies solely to unmoderated newsgroups.
Q. Where did the term "FAQ thumper" come from?
A. When I first encountered these strange people who could
quote their newsgroup's FAQ verbatim and did so at every chance that
presented itself, I was instantly reminded of the born-again
Christian types I've known throughout my time. Like "bible thumpers"
who can recite an appropriate verse from Scripture for almost any
topic of conversation that they are presented, FAQ thumpers exhibit
the same skill and fervent zealotry as their Christian zombie-like
brethren in embracing and quoting their hallowed FAQ's.
Q. Who appointed/elected the FAQ thumpers?
A. Nobody! It's a job they took on by themselves. These
wanna-be dictators of cyberspace don't even enjoy popular support in
most newsgroups they infest.
Q. Why do they take on their self-appointed roles?
A. Mainly to enjoy the illusion of power. There are other
reasons (covered later), but the desire for some measure of authority
is the essence of their motivation. Chances are excellent that this
tiny minority of aspiring cybercops have little in the way of power
in their real lives so they desperately attempt to fill that void on
the net.
Q. Do they have any real authority? In other words, do they
present any threat to me?
A. None whatsoever. Despite their threats about complaining
to ISP's, they realize that no ISP is going to dump a paying customer
on the basis of some self-righteous twit lodging a complaint about
your violation of an FAQ. It would be a different situation if you
were posting porn someplace where it doesn't belong or spamming a
newsgroup with commercial ads, but any reputable ISP would promptly
dump any complaint about anything as utterly trivial as posting
requests or questions anywhere. Furthermore, any complaints about
newsgroups of "questionable" repute are almost universally dumped by
ISP's regardless of what sort of so-called abuse is taking place
within them. "Questionable" newsgroups are those which are magnets
for people engaged in the distribution of either pornography or
copyrighted materials such as "warez," or media products which have
been digitally copied (mp3, mpeg, wav, jpg etc.). Complaints from
such newsgroups are viewed by ISP's as the proverbial "pot calling
the kettle black" types of indictments and are generally sneered
at... if they receive any attention at all.
Q. Why do they use such threats if they can't really get
action from most ISP's?
A. Simple. Such threats are very effective when leveled at
novice Internet users. The FAQ thumpers are essentially cyber
versions of schoolyard bullies without the muscle to back them up.
Since a newcomer to the newsgroups has no idea of how things work
until they've been around for awhile, if someone pounces on them and
makes ominous-sounding threats, until they learn they really have
little to fear they acquiesce to the bully's demand... at first. A
good analogy is to watch the way someone who has never been stung by
a bee or wasp reacts when one flies around them as opposed to how
someone who has been stung reacts.
Q. Are there any types of complaints other than spamming or
posting pornography inappropriately that are taken seriously by
ISP's?
A. Yes, but the effectiveness of the complaint is nearly
always dependent upon the content of the newsgroup it concerns. In
other words, if you post messages containing profanity in a newsgroup
which contains "adults only" content such as those newsgroups dealing
with pornographic images or texts dealing with sex acts, your
complaint will be given no attention whatsoever. On the other hand,
if you post that same kind of profanity in a newsgroup dealing with
intellectual, family-oriented or religious subjects, a complaint
against you has a much better chance of getting you warned or
summarily dumped by most ISP's. Usually you'll receive a warning
e-mail before any decent ISP dumps your account, though. Any ISP who
terminates your account without first giving you a chance to present
your side of the story isn't one you want to pay your hard-earned
money for, so if you do get summarily dumped consider it a favor from
the dunces who run such an ISP.
Q. I've seen claims on the part of FAQ thumpers that their
activities act as a bulwark against the newsgroup being overrun by
spam. Is that true?
A. No, not at all. Spammers generally aim their efforts at
newsgroups based on how germane to what they are peddling the content
of the newsgroup is. A small amount of spam is therefore the norm in
just about every newsgroup on Usenet. The only time spam "overruns"
any newsgroup is if it proves lucrative for the spammers to advertise
their products and services in it. For instance, you see little if
any spam in those newsgroups that deal with "warez" and other
copyrighted materials because the last thing a software maker or
media artist wants to do is attract attention to their products in
areas where their product might wind up being freely distributed
without generating any revenue.
Q. Do FAQ thumpers have any positive effects whatsoever in
the newsgroups they try to control?
A. On the contrary, they normally do far more harm than they
do good. Even the most casual examination of newsgroups where FAQ
thumpers are most active will sadly reveal a much higher number of
unproductive and genuinely "off-topic" text posts taking up bandwidth
and making life miserable for those seeking the kind of help or files
the newsgroup is presumably designed to provide. FAQ thumpers behave
like packs of wolves waiting to pounce upon the weakest members of
the herd. Once one of them does so, the rest pile on the targeted
prey so that a single alleged infraction of their revered FAQ
generates dozens of "Read the #!%*&!!$*&!! FAQ, you #%$^!!*%*{?!
newbie!"-type posts. Inevitably, people who don't take kindly to
cyber-fascism chime in to defend the poor novice the FAQ thumpers are
gangbanging so that the initial flurry of admonishments winds up
generating an exponentially growing number of counter responses.
Egotists that they are, FAQ thumpers never let anyone get in the last
word besides themselves, so they invariably respond with rebuttals to
anyone who comes to their victim's defense. Compounding the problem
further is the fact that many FAQ thumpers are very prodigious in
their zeal to police their little domains. It's not at all unusual
for a single FAQ thumper to post over 50 messages a day.
Q. Do FAQ thumpers also contribute "on-topic" posts to the
newsgroups they patrol?
A. One would think that those who profess to be so dedicated
to the well-being of a newsgroup would also be amongst the most
prolific contributors of assistance and files, but alas, this is
universally not the case. In fact, FAQ thumpers are generally little
better than so-called "lurkers" when it comes to actually
contributing content to their newsgroups. Hypocrisy is an integral
part of the psyche of most FAQ thumpers. Their real interest in most
newsgroups is to flex their imaginary muscles by sniping at others.
Q. Being an FAQ thumper seems to be a huge expenditure of
wasted time and energy... there's just got to be more to their
motivation than the illusion of power. What else drives these
creatures?
A. There are a lot of frustrated, lonely and secluded people
in our society. Many of the most active FAQ thumpers are likely to
be unemployed people living off of personal assets and/or government
assistance. It is entirely plausible that many are shut-ins who are
permanently disabled. This may seem like a cheap shot, but two
things are obvious about FAQ thumpers: they all seem to have far more
time to spend at their computer keyboards than most of us do, and
they all carry around chips on their shoulders. Some disabled people
remain very bitter about the cards fate has dealt them and are in an
ideal position to devote large amounts of time to cyberspace. What
better way to feel connected while in seclusion than to participate
in the online community, and what better way to experience the
illusion of being empowered when one is feeling otherwise helpless?
Those FAQ thumpers who are not shut-ins are almost necessarily
loners with little in the way of a normal social life. Think about
it... what time could such people possibly devote to socializing
after working an 8-hour day and then spending so much time ferreting
out as many FAQ transgressors as they do on a daily basis?
In any case, FAQ thumpers are universally people with severe
emotional problems. You couldn't pay most of us to sit at a keyboard
for hours at a time every day with the sole task of composing
messages that almost always drip with sarcasm, condescension, anger
and self-importance. No mentally healthy person would ever dream of
taking on such an onerous chore of their own volition.
PARTING ADVICE. FAQ thumpers are irrepressible. Like death
and taxes, there's no escaping them. They have been with us
throughout our lives and will hound us to our graves. They were our
kid brothers and sisters who tattled to our parents about everything
we did in an effort to vent their frustration at being the weakest
members of the family. They were the teachers' pets in school who
were keepers of the erasers and appointed as class monitors (stool
pigeons) whenever the teacher had to leave the room. In high school
they were the hall monitors. In college, they began to find fewer
outlets where they could enjoy any sort of empowerment so they became
the withdrawn loners who went through four years or more of virtual
invisibility to most people on campus. As adults, they are the
neighbors who peer out from behind their curtains every time they
hear so much as a car door slam. They are the people who call the
cops at the most trivial or imagined violation of their peace or
property. They maintain mental dossiers on all of their neighbors
and are eager to share them with anyone who gives them an opportunity
to recite their gossip. As co-workers, they are the boss's
informers. They'll tell you how lazy a co-worker is and, as soon as
you are out of earshot, they will tell someone else how lazy they
think you are. If they outlive you, you can be absolutely certain
they will have no qualms whatsoever about verbally diminishing your
existence before your corpse has even grown cold.
Given all the aforementioned, the best thing to do with FAQ
thumpers is to simply kill filter them. You can be sure that by
doing so you won't miss any genuine content in whatever newsgroup
you're in.
______________________________________________________________________
JUST THE FAQS: VIEWS OF NEWSADMINS JEREMY NIXON, STEVE GIELDA & OTHERS
______________________________________________________________________
From: Jeremy Nixon - Supernews <jnixon@supernews.com>
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.news-server-comparison
Subject: Re: Question for Supernews
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 16:47:04 -0000
Message-ID: <40d86171.5012.2bc@supernews.com>
I'm not sure what you're referring to, but was it the one about
someone "violating the FAQ"? I'm not going to waste my time with
such nonsense (a FAQ is a list of questions and answers, I'm not
sure how it's possible to "violate" such a thing, except maybe by
inserting ASCII-art cats.)
______________________________________________________________________
From: Stephen K. Gielda <steve@packetderm.com.bogus>
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.news-server-comparison
Subject: Re: Question for Supernews
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 13:43:13 -0400
Message-ID: <MPG.1b4239bcaabe91e5989821@news.newsreader.com>
It's not spam nor is it abuse to violate someone's "FAQ". You don't
get to make rules up, publish them in some "FAQ", and then have that
be law of the group. You don't get to be moderator of an unmoderated
group. It doesn't work that way.
______________________________________________________________________
From: Jeremy Nixon - Supernews <jnixon@supernews.com>
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.news-server-comparison
Subject: Re: Question for Supernews
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 17:53:39 -0000
Message-ID: <40d87155.5234.3a8@supernews.com>
A FAQ is not something that can be "violated"; the mere idea is
absurd. What if I write up my own FAQ and post it to your group, and
it says that you're not allowed to post there, because anything you
post is, by my own personal definition, spam?
You don't get to declare yourself the moderator of an unmoderated
group.
______________________________________________________________________
From: Hallerts <Hallerts@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.electronic
Subject: Re: Keep Posting Forever Goa Forever TranceFront.jpg (1/1)
Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2006 13:47:41 GMT
Message-ID: <Xns977A595D74662ProShowGoFlow@208.49.80.124>
The charter is an imaginary set of 'guidelines' at best, that cannot
be enforced in any way. And if you read most charters, they are
usually quite off.
______________________________________________________________________
From: John_S <appleseed@orchard.net>
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.cracks,...,alt.binaries.warez.ibm-pc.d
Subject: Re: WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE ON!!!!
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 23:36:25 -0400
Message-ID: <o88sl0pg4akbdv15pnag8ekc8h3ae95k4i@4ax.com>
A charter is meaningless. What a group is used for is determined by
the users. ALL the users.
Go look at alt.binaries.leeks and tell me how many leeks are posted
there.
______________________________________________________________________
From: "Meat-->Plow" <Meat@petitmorte.net>
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.warez.ibm-pc.d,...
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2004 19:40:00 -0400
Message-ID: <4eu9c0tm5r7c8t5corkgmm3mn97ligrqo1@4ax.com>
FAQs are for impotent little twats. And bogus FAQs are laughed at
unmercifully.
______________________________________________________________________
RECOMMENDED READING
______________________________________________________________________
The REAL Truth About FAQs and Charters
http://groups.uffnet.com/groups?selm=7R7R88CW37088.1355208333@frog.nyarlatheotep.org
Cyberstalkers, Control Freaks and Self Appointed Usenet Cops
http://groups.uffnet.com/groups?selm=775H3RVY37057.1566666667@frog.nyarlatheotep.org
______________________________________________________________________
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