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Archive-name: net-legends-faq/part1
Posting-Frequency: every 73 days
Last-modified: 9/13/94

 This... is the Net.Legends FAQ. Due to minutes^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hweeks of
unrelenting plagiar^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hresearch, we have gathered together here
some descriptions of those net.phenomena that one hears about in passing,
and (due to the collective memory of the Net being about one week, maximum)
wishes one had more information about (such as "Who *was* McElwaine,
anyway, and *why* is he still being talked about?). What follows is a list
of some of the Legends of the Net, along with descriptions,
semi-explanations, and (in some cases) a parenthesized catchphrase for
easy identification... not all of the following are completely factual
entries: in some cases the true facts are known only to one person, or lost
in the mists of time, while in others the facts pale in relation to the
mythology. In any case, the actual facts included, sparse though they may be,
are true as far as I know; if you have evidence otherwise, please contact me
and *tell* me (saying "This is wrong!" without actually saying *what* is wrong
with it is of little use to me, though...) (Note: "Myth" is canonically used
to refer to stories involving gods or other supernatural beings; "legend"
refers to stories involving humans that could be true.)
 The FAQ in each case should be considered to be "Who or what is ____ and
where can I get some [no wait.. umm..] why & how should I know this? [yeah,
that's it]". The miniFAQs mentioned are available by anon-ftp (as is this
FAQ) or gopher to cathouse.org, the awesome AFU archive, under
/pub/cathouse/urban.legends/net.legends, and are mostly composed of
representative posts... they are also available by mosaic to
http://enigma.phys.utk.edu, in my personal page (click on UT Particle Theory
Group at the bottom of the HomePage and then on David DeLaney, middle of page)
[they are *not* stored on enigma, so don't write angry letters to the
sysadmins
*or* to the Boss and annoy them, please], at least as long as that personal
page stays there.... The FAQ and the miniFAQs are currently *not* available at
utk via anon-ftp; the FAQ's several places on Internet, most of which I don't
know, but one is ftp.umd.umich.edu, under /pub/text; another is in /pub/crd at
ftp.netcom.com, which is now a Hypertext/Mosaic link to the cathouse archive
mentioned above. If the posting to news.answers has worked, the FAQ will also
be archived at rtfm.mit.edu, in the appropriate subdirectory for news.answers,
alt.answers, alt.folklore.computers, and alt.usenet.kooks ... Have Fun!

Disclaimer(s):
 *Since* these are in fact net.*legends*, not much of a real attempt to verify
that these people actually do hold these opinions, exist at these addresses,
etc., has been made; in addition, much of this FAQ is in the form of, er,
"overheard" posts (fully credited at the end), to give some feel of what it
might be like to *have* heard a net.conversation about them, and to preserve
the "legend" style... The "Contrib. post"s are posts (or sometimes email)
which
people have made, recalling what they remember about the subject, and are not
guaranteed to be accurate, but only what the person who posted them
remembered.
 If you have better info on any of these, see the last bit of the FAQ (if
you *are* any of these, and wish to correct some info, by all means go ahead!
Lewis Stiller did, and won a new updated entry! Dan Karnes broke the chain,
and 2 weeks later got exiled to news.admin.*...).
 Any attempt to actually email any of these addresses may have results ranging
from complete silence to a perfectly normal conversation to mailbombing to
complaints to your sysadmin to sudden inclusion in a vast global conspiracy;
You Have Been Warned. Also, if you're one of the type who call up all the
phone numbers they see in movies (which is why the 555 exchange is universally
used in the USA now for these things ... but I digress) consider what it might
be like to have *your* name appear on one of these things... and wake up with
1,000 pieces of mail in your mailbx...
 This is *not* "the FAQ for alt.usenet.kooks" (motto: In Cyberspace Everybody
Can Hear You Scream), by the way; many of the people herein are here only
because they are or were *noticeable* in one way or another on various
(sometimes widespread) parts of UseNet. Some are loons, yes, or crackpots or
kooks; some are not by *any* stretch of the imagination. Some are probably not
very sane, while others are quite sane, and there's even some where it's very
hard to tell one way or the other; all, however, have *some* distinguishing
characteristic(s) that cause them to stick in people's memories. By the way,
the repeated use of "loon" and its derivatives in the quoted posts and some of
the descriptions comes mainly from the origination of this FAQ in a thread
entitled "Call For Loons" (which started on alt.folklore.computers), before it
became clear that *notoriety*, not looniness, should be the distinguishing
characteristic of those gathered herein.
 This is not a complete listing of Notable People Of Usenet - be serious! The
net's way too big for that. This is a selection (albeit a large one). This
FAQ is also biased, in most cases towards the humorous side; all FAQs are
biased, because they are ultimately written by people who are biased. There's
not enough room in the world's hard disks to present all sides of every
argument for every person and/or phenomenon noted in here, so some things are
inevitably gonna be left out. Deal with it. In most cases, if you want to
know more, you can either ask on the newsgroup(s) in question or ask the
net.legend themselves; many will be happy to explain (sometimes at great
length) their particular quirks, or why they feel the way they do. Some will
of course be acrimonious instead of happy; see above about emailing them...
 The information in here is inevitably somewhat or largely out-of-date,
simply because the Net (and even Real Life) keep moving on. No conceivable
FAQ could keep up with the *current* doings of even a small fraction of the
people listed herein. Updates will be accepted, and probably stuck on the
bottom of the 10,000 or so lines of other raw-data-to-be-smelted-into-FAQ-
entries currently in the possession of the FAQ-maker...
 And yes, the format is a bit difficult to find things in; it was hard to
write, so it should be hard to read, no? Search functions are your *friend*...

Table of Contents:
-----------------
1.0 The Good Guys
 Kibo
 tale
 Spaf
 the da Silvas
 Ron "Asbestos" Dippold and the UVV
 The Warlord
 The UseNet Oracle
 alt.fan.lemurs
2.0 The Rest Of The Stories
 McElwaine
 B1FF
 Gary Stollman
 Jack Schmidling
 L. Detweiler
 Abian
 Serdar Argic
 Jack Sarfatti
 Hannu Poropudas
 Dan Gannon
 Riley G.
 ted frank
 snopes & Lasner
 Ludwig Plutonium
 Ted Holden
 Shub-Internet
 Daniel Drucker
 John_-_Winston
 Dave Hayes
 Dick Depew
 John Palmer
 Bruce Becker
 Laurence Godfrey
 David Sternlight
 Pat Townson
 Daniel J. Karnes
3.0 Stupid Net Tricks
 Dave Rhodes & MAKE.MONEY.FAST
 Alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb
 "Surveys"/"Homework"/"Email me!!"
 "Will you icky queers kindly go awaaaaaay!"
 Clueless newbies
 Death of UseNet/Internet predicted
 .sig viruses
 alt.religion.kibology
 Crossposted to *.test
 Posted separately to every newsgroup you can find
 Hitler, Nazis, nazis, and net.cops
 UseNet Rules #n
 Permanent Floating Flamewars
 Email Addresses of the Rich and Famous
4.0 Lesser Lights
 various and sundry, too many to list here; read! read!
5.0 Also Nominated
 but with little or no information attached, unfortunately...
6.0 Other Callings
 or, The Debris Of The Naming Straw Poll
7.0 Credits
 You know who you are ... or you *will*...

Net.Legends Roll Call:
----------------------
1.0  Let's start with the "good guys", chief amongst which is:

Kibo (You're allowed.           -- K.):
 Perhaps the single defining hallmark of genius is to do something that noone
else has ever done before, or even thought of doing, and make it look
blindingly obvious afterwards. James "Kibo" Parry, confronted with the vast
reality of UseNet, decided to begin `grep'ing his entire newsfeed for posts
containing his middle monicker, "Kibo", in order to look them over and see if
they were worth replying to. (Actually, he now uses `agrep', and I do not know
if he started out on `grep'.) As a result, any post mentioning Kibo became
suddenly apt to generate a followup from the Great One, or at least email from
him. As his art was refined, he started also grepping for "xvob" ("kibo" in
rot13 encryption) and anti-grepping for "ski boots", for obvious reasons (but
not for "kibosh"...). He has become a UseNet term, derived from this activity:
grepping your entire newsfeed is "kibozing", and one who does so is a
"kibozer" (or, depending on how you feel about them, a "kibozo"). Reference
has been seen on alt.folklore.computers to an operating system (not UNIX)
having to "kiboze its hard disk" to find files...
 He has his own newsgroup, alt.religion.kibology, which is also his own
religion (Kibo is a genuine net.god, along with tale and Shub-Internet (q.v.))
where odd posts happen (including regular postings from John_-_Winston (q.v.)
and, formerly, Lewis Stiller (q.v.)); alt.exploding.kibo (newgrouped by Kevin
L. McBride), its counterpart alt.imploding.kibo (a Carasso [tm] product), and
alt.politics.kibo also exist, at various levels of activity. Rec.kibo.hunting,
proposed by Joel Furr (q.v.), was never allowed into the RFD stage by tale
(q.v.)... Most people and subjects are Allowed to post or be posted about on
a.r.k . He has an imitator and opposite, xibo (q.v.); he has a dog, named
Spot, who (along with xibo and a few others) is Not Allowed [he's Just a Dog,
dammit!]. He has what is probably the canonical example of a supremely
warlordable .signature; however, he rarely uses it, preferring the terse
"        -- K.". Don't ask to see it unless you *really* want to know.
 Several other people have adapted or re-invented the newsgrep technique for
purposes of their own, including Serdar Argic (q.v.); Larry Wall, the creator
of the language perl (who does it, using Perl, to answer Perl questions);
Peter Trei (q.v.), who greps for Freemasonry references, and Daniel J. Karnes
(q.v.), who apparently does it to inflict himself on newsgroups talking about
him. (Reportedly) the National Security Agency was doing it long before Kibo
ever thought of it, so watch out...
 If you have ever received email from Kibo, your official Kibo number starts
out as 1; if you have not received email from anyone whose Kibo number is < n,
but have received email from someone whose Kibo # is n, then yours is n+1.
Fractional Kibo numbers are imposters (i.e., ted frank (q.v.)); Kibo's own
Kibo number is 0. Posts don't count for Kibo number purposes, only email. (A
few others have had Kibo number zero as well, earned in various ways; Kibo can
also assign a number to you, and came in 2nd in the "most evil
net.personalities" vote, so watch it.) Thom Grace claims credit for
originating these numbers. He's even been featured [Kibo, not Thom] in a White
Wolf gaming supplement (for "Mage"), and in Playboy (no pictorials yet
though)... His titles include "Great Leader" and "He Who Greps"; discussions
about Kibo tend to attract his attention unless specific precautions are taken
(e.g.: Quibeau [doesn't work, don't bother]), and such precautions, in
general,
don't last very long... Kibo has no real "haunts" other than his group(s) and
UseNet in general, but *does* read alt.folklore.computers; HappyNet is ... not
yet implemented. Kibo celebrated September in 1994 by having his own death
faked by members of his newsgroup, possibly unbeknownst to him...
Contrib. post:
> I do not read a.f.c any more that I read other groups;  HappyNet is
> implemented, it's just that YOU'RE not connected to it because YOU have
> a wimpy site!  a.r.k is just about the only group I read *all* the
> articles in, except maybe control.  No, I'm kidding about control.
--
 FAQs for a.r.k, Spot, and HappyNet are available, as well as an a.r.k IAQ;
a.r.k is archived on world.std.com in /pub/alt.religion.kibology, along with
Kibo's .sig and Kibo's McElwaine and Plutonium archives, of which he is very
proud. Posts from [e-mail] (James "Kibo" Parry).
--
> Also posts from other places and names, but they're secret and you can't
> figure out where they are, la la la.
--

tale (... is an unmoderated newsgroup which passed its vote for creation
 by ...):
 David Lawrence spends time and energy selflessly to maintain order in the
news.* hierarchy. He moderates news.announce.newgroups, and has effectively
net.god status, in that sysadmins everywhere look for the tale seal of
approval on newgroups for the Big Seven hierarchies. Gods help us if he
ever has a stroke from holding in criticism of Dave Hayes (q.v.) too long.
A man who knows that silence is usually a *very* effective strategy; speaks
only when there's something important to say (entirely unlike the rest of
UseNet). Posts, rarely, from [e-mail] (David C Lawrence).

Spaf:
 Closely net.related to tale, Gene Spafford compiled the non-bogus group
lists;
his decisions had such influence across the net that, so the saying goes,
`if a newgroup isn't "spaf", it won't be propagated'. This issue came up in
the SF-reorganization flamewar, as well as in the much less noisy
rec.arts.anime reorganization, with regards to things such as fanfic groups,
which Spaf would presumably not permit. If there were an actual head of a
Net.Control.Cabal, Spaf was *it* (however, see UseNet Rule #0); he taught
them all they know and wrote many of the FAQs appearing in news.answers...
he's also known as "Emily Postnews". He also only did really useful important
things rather than nutty noticeable things, and thus tended to fade into the
UseNet background. Unfortunately, he seems to be more faded than usual these
days, and it's generally accepted that he resigned and moved on to Real Life
things some time ago (a post from him was recently seen on news.admin.*
saying that he doesn't even *read* news these days)...

Peter and Stephanie da Silva:
 Also in the category "do many many useful things for UseNet and get noticed
very little". Provide voices of reason on news.*. Peter apparently maintains
some of the Guidelines; Stephanie maintains the List of Publicly Accessible
Mailing Lists, and is one of the few people with the ability to slap Kibo on
the nose and get away with it... Peter seems to have originated the "that
name is a crawling horror from the sewers of hell" Newsgroup Name Objection,
according to Stephanie. May be considered to be Cabal-members-if-there-
actually-were-such-a-thing-as-a-Cabal (again, see Rule #0). Stephanie posts as
[e-mail] (email: [e-mail]), Peter as [e-mail] .

Ron "Asbestos" Dippold and the UVV (The Knights Who Say Ack!):
Contrib. post:
 Since August of 1993, the USENET Volunteer Votetakers --- The Knights
Who Say Ack! --- have conducted polls for close to a gross of groups.
Co-ordinated by Ron Dippold, who has himself handled several dozen
proposals, they have provided a very valuable service to USENET by
bringing quality and consistency to a observably less than ideal group
creation process.  They do their jobs with no compensation but the
feeling that they are contribution something positive to the network
news community.  It's generally a job done without observable
gratitude, and I don't want it overlooked.
 Knights, on behalf of myself and many group proponents, users and
administrators everywhere, I say thank you.  Well done!
David Lawrence, moderator, news.announce.newgroups
--
 The UVV has pretty much put an end to the formerly-common flamewars over
vote results; biased vote-takers, vote floodings, and other Usenet Big 7
voting
rules violations have dropped remarkably since their inception. They will
also do straw polls on various subjects, in addition to their usual CFV
vote counting, if asked nicely.
 Ron posts from [e-mail] (Ron "Asbestos" Dippold); votes taken
by the UVV usually are done from [e-mail]; see also:
news.announce.newgroups ...

The Warlord:
 The original owner of the sword that appears in .sig files all over
UseNet, in various forms. Left this plane long ago, but passed on his flame
of inquiry and satire to George McQuary (of the McQxxx four-line .sig limit),
who in turn shared it with the alt.fan.warlord Inner Circle. They've been
doling out said flame in drips and driblets ever since, whenever an
especially "warlordable" .sig comes along. So be good little .sig designers,
boys and girls, or you may find yourself suddenly transported to a.f.w and
mercilessly mocked, and possibly have your .sig even animate itself to
death. [I'm putting this under the "good guys" for a good reason, ok?] Does
not post himself; others do his work for him.

The UseNet Oracle:
 Has its own groups, rec.humor.oracle and rec.humor.oracle.d . Will answer
questions if groveled to sufficiently. Querents are referred to the UseNet
Oracle FAQ; beware the "ZOT!". One may also mail [e-mail] with
the word "help" in the Subject: line to get information, or with "tellme"
or "tell me" in the Subject: line if you have a burning question for the
Oracle...

Alt.fan.lemurs:
 What can we say (besides Frink!)? Check out the Frinkquently Asked Questions,
in six parts; bring along your grape soda. Several parts lemur humor, lemur
poetry, lemurs swinging from ceiling lamps and plotting to liberate grape
soda from supermarkets, and frequently saying "Frink!", to one part actual
lemur facts and how you can help this endangered species...

2.0  __________________________________________
That's the good news; now for the odd, bad, distinctive, memorable, or just
plain irreproducible (tm) news:

Robert E. McElwaine (UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this
 IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED):
Contrib. post:
 The nice thing about mcelwaine was that they acted as proxy for not just one
loon, but for every loon in the local galactic cluster. mcelwaine was sort of
a lightning rod for looniness, like some sort of device that tesla might have
dreamt up to concentrate and store the stuff. but frankly i stopped reading
mcelwaine's posts pretty quickly; it was all just too repetitive and too
pointless. but i never stopped reading those little one or two-line
introductions to the canned posts, tailored to each individual newsgroup,
explaining the reason for the cross-post. those were often priceless gems of
idiocy.
--
 Ahhh, McElwaine. Fun fellow. Completely and utterly loony.
His site-imposed censorship was a blow to comedically inclined
physicists around the world.
--
[e-mail] wrote:
>You almost have that McElwaine-ian touch, JF, by
>randomly capitalizing words, but you still haven't
>yet mastered the RM's decidedly brilliant method
>of randomly throwing in dollar $IGN$!
 McElwaine didn't "randomly" throw in dollar signs.  THere were
a few words that he consistently dollar-signed, and a few words
that had dollar signs every once in a while.
 Nor did he randomly capitalize words, although his capitalization
is indeed unorthodox.
 I have done some counting-up-of-words for the corpus of
McElwainiana, and I have some preliminary results.  Sooner-or-later,
I intend to post a summary of what I have found, along with a
program to implement McElwaining of arbitrary text.
--
>Does anyone know what McElwaine's position was at UW Eau-Claire?
>(BTW, he never responded to my email.)
 No, Robert never responded to anyone's email, and I'll bet he used to get a
bunch of it!  McElwaine was an undergrad student at UWEC who then graduated
from there and apparently hung around the school after graduation, either
working there part time or just hanging-out.  If he entered grad school
he never mentioned it, and since he was very fond of signing himself:
  Robert E. McElwaine
  Physicist and Astronomer B.Sc. UWEC
I'm sure he would have trumpeted any grad school work he was doing.
--
I am one of the lucky few, then - here's one I got back when hew first started
the posting binge.  Note that his famous capitalization style extends to
email.
Makes you wonder what he sounded like in person.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 04 Feb 1993 17:44:07 -0600 (CST)
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: FREE-ENERGY TECHNOLOGY For Spacecraft
>Hello,
>       You posted this same article to sci.astro a few months ago.  There was
>a great deal of discussion about it at the time, but you did not reply to any
>of the comments.  May I ask why you would want to post the same big artile
>again if you don't want to participate in any discussion of it?
     I repost articles for the benefit of NEW READERS.  I do NOT have time to
argue about with CLOSED MINDS.  Interested readers should consult my cited
SOURCES.
--
 Apparently lost his account Some Time Ago for abusing net-access privileges;
has not been seen since... Kibo maintains an archive of McElwaine's postings
on UseNet,at world.std.com, under /pub/alt.religion.kibology/net-wackiness/
mcelwaine, for those of you who came in too late to $EE the real THING.
Joel Furr (q.v.) has released a McElwaine T-shirt. Posted from
[e-mail] (??).

B1FF (HEY D00DZ!1!!  THIS IZ K()()L!!1!!):
 extremely unorthodox (but somewhat consistent, and *easily* mimickable)
typography in his posts (ALL CAPS, I->1, O->0, E->3, etc.) "K00L, DUD3Z!",
plus much surfer-type slang. B1FF posts from a Commodore C-64, and is a Kool
Dude who Rilly Knows Net.Stuff. Has many imitators. Remembered semi-fondly by
millions. Had a girlfriend, Buffy (tee-hee! :-) :-) *giggle*! :-) :-) ),
[or possibly Muffy; rumors are flying that Muffy has been killed by
kibologists
- I would remind people that Rumors are Treason and make The Computer unHappy;
have a Nice Day, Citizen...] who would probably blow Phil Gustafson's diodes
permanently were she to appear on afu... B1FF is *not* Kibo, nor is Kibo B1FF.
Nu-uh. Nope. B1FF was last seen proclaiming his new account, [e-mail] (an
obvious forgery, of course - B1FF has no minuscules) and before that, his
[e-mail] account (and before *that* on news.groups, quickly
followed by buffy).
--
From the alt.religion.kibology FAQ:
"WHO IS BIFF?"
 BIFF IZ A REELY K00L D00D !!!!!!!!!!!!!1 HE P0STS 2 THE NET FR0M HIZ
BIG BROTHERS C-64 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111 BIFF IS AWESUM
..........,,,,
"SAY, KIBO, ARE YOU RELATED TO BIFF?"
 N0 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"IS BIFF A KIBOLOGIST?"
 Everyone's a Kibologist... whether they know it or not!
--
Contrib. post:
5> STOP OVER-BIFFING.  BIFF is simply a YUNG D00D on his brother's
5> COMMODUR with poor spelling, grammar and typing skills.  He is not
5> dyslexic.  If i see someone use a 3 instead of an E in a BIFF post
5> i will claw my eyes out with a spork.
5> Don't overemote.  Keep BIFF simple.  He is a simple personality.
 He used to be.  But he got older and learned about RADIK()()L NEW
BBSES D00D WHERE EVERY 1 TALKS LIKE HIM!!!111
 BUT THEY UZED 3 1NSTEAD 0F E!!111
 THEY WER THE AWESUM K00L HAKERS AND B1FF WANTED S0 MUCH 2 B LIKE THEM!!!111
 THEY HAD ALL THE LATEST WAREZ!!!11
 S0 B1FF START3D T0 US3 3 INST3D 0F E CUZ ITZ WAY K00L3R!!!111
 N0W B1FF IZ A WAY-K00L HAKER D()()D 2!!!!11111
 WAY 2 G0 B1FF!!!1111
--
 Let me take a moment and explain the history of the Wacky Misspelling
Gag.  It started out as a parody of usage common in certain subcultures,
particularly those of teenage software pirates and crackers, and infantile
Usenet newbies.  You still see someone who types this way without irony
every once in a while, particularly in groups devoted to heavy-metal
bands.  In any case, at some point a number of different individuals
created a mythical entity named BIFF or [e-mail] or [e-mail]
or something like that, an enthusiastic but clueless adolescent who posted
from his brother's Commodore 64.  BIFF typed in all caps, often with
bizarre line breaks, and ended every sentence with a string of !!'s and
some ones mixed in for good measure (which really makes no sense
given the C64 keyboard, but BIFF's naivete exceeded even physical bounds).
 It is a very old joke and tired too, but now that's its charm, as
Mike Nelson as Jack Perkins would say.  Most of us started out as
BIFFs in some sense or another; we would put huge ASCII swords in
our .signature files, or misspell things intentionally so it would
be K00L, or respond in a puzzled manner to obvious bait and flame the
poster apoplectically in sentences ending in strings of exclamation
points.  We look back on our newbiehood, and BIFF helps
us remember.  Personally, one of the most embarrassing aspects of my
Usenet childhood was that I thought BIFF had at one time been a real person.
 In any case, now you know.  Kibo wasn't responsible, not originally, at
least.  I've asked him who was, but he says if he tells me he'll
have to kill me.
--
 [The true ID of the *original* B1FF is to be found in the Jargon File (which
spells it "BIFF"; this can be found at prep.ai.mit.edu (18.71.0.38), in
directory pub/gnu, as the file named jargon300.ascii.gz (gzipped); >1MB
unzipped, watch out! Also at netcom.com, in /pub/linley. I include it here:]
--
Lookup request: BIFF
:BIFF: /bif/ [USENET] n. The most famous {pseudo}, and the
   prototypical {newbie}. Articles from BIFF are characterized by
   all uppercase letters sprinkled liberally with bangs, typos,
   `cute' misspellings (EVRY BUDY LUVS GOOD OLD BIFF CUZ HE"S A
   K00L DOOD AN HE RITES REEL AWESUM THINGZ IN CAPITULL LETTRS LIKE
   THIS!!!), use (and often misuse) of fragments of {talk mode}
   abbreviations, a long {sig block} (sometimes even a {doubled
   sig}), and unbounded naivet'e. BIFF posts articles using his
   elder brother's VIC-20. BIFF's location is a mystery, as his
   articles appear to come from a variety of sites. However,
   {BITNET} seems to be the most frequent origin. The theory that
   BIFF is a denizen of BITNET is supported by BIFF's (unfortunately
   invalid) electronic mail address: [e-mail].

   [1993: Now It Can Be Told! My spies inform me that BIFF was
   originally created by Joe Talmadge <[e-mail]>, also the
   author of the infamous and much-plagiarized "Flamer's Bible".
   The BIFF filter he wrote was later passed to Richard Sexton [q.v.], who
   posted BIFFisms much more widely. Versions have since been posted
   for the amusement of the net at large. --- ESR]
--
 BIFF (not B1FF) was created by Joe Talmadge (of "Ten Rules for Flaming"
fame) of HP in 1988. Joe posted three postings by BIFF from his account,
and shortly after Richard Sexton began sending out [e-mail] postings
for about a year until he lost interest. At this time, because some idiot
had posted "How to forge a posting" to talk.bizarre, everybody and his
brother was now forging B1FF postings. Talmadge and Sexton never used
digits (C00L, B1FF) in BIFF postings. Most of the original BIFF forgeries
were done from psuvm1.psu.edu .
--

Gary Stollman:
pursued by aliens; was not seen for a while, but has turned up posting from
Netcom on alt.alien.visitors .
Contrib. posts:
 I remember Stollman quite well. However, I never did save them [his posts]
since I thought he was going to be Eternal. At least until the Aliens
got me, at which point I wouldn't care.
 He was manic, paranoiac, and a man of his convictions. I think he'd had
several convictions, though he was not guilty by reason of insanity...
--
 I do have Gary Stollman's long life story somewhere -- the
highlight of this is how he realized that people were following him
when he started staring at this family he saw at a rest stop, and they
became so discomfited at his staring that they left! Imagine!
--
 I remember Gary. I even flamed him once. It was kind of mean, it was
an indirect flame/rant about the lack of interesting nutcases (ie, Van
Gogh was a more interesting and creative mentally disturbed type of
person, you're no Van Gogh etc.)
 He responded in his usual fashion. "No, it really did happen!" etc.
I feel pretty sorry for him really. I remember seeing the fake gun
holdup on TV. It surprised me that this guy had gotten net.access.
Mind you, it says a lot about some mental illnesses-- you can be
intelligent and yet totally unable to deal with one facet of reality.
--
>From [e-mail] Sat Mar 19 01:21:44 PST 1994

Well, the account name looks similar...

>Article: 4028 of alt.alien.visitors
>Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors

Posting to the same groups as usual...

>From: [e-mail] (Gary Stollman)
>Subject: INVASION!!!

His favorite subject-line...

>Summary: Yeh, I'm still around...
>Keywords: stollman, invasion, clones

Not sure about him adding keywords, but never mind...

>Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 02:51:58 GMT

>This is just to let people know that I am still around and
>functioning...I am curently taking a C programming class at Tallahassee
>Community College, currently I have an A in it, I just want to get it
>done so I can visit my mom in LA...Enjoy!!!!!
 Hmm.. Seems a little "upbeat" for Gary.  New medication?  It's a little
short to be able to tell if it is his style (the easiest way of detecting
forgeries, IMHO... anyone can forge an email address but forging style
is another thing entirely!) but it is close enough to what I remember.
>       Gary
>--
>Gary Stollman    Internet: [e-mail]     GEnie: G.STOLLMAN
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>          The world is your playground.  Keep it clean!
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
Same .signature.  Brings back memories!  (sniff)  Well I would say that
it is about a 80% probability of being him.  Glad he's back, and that the
clones didn't get 'im after all... :)
--
Currently posting from [e-mail] (Gary Stollman), and possibly from
Gary Stollman <[e-mail]>.

Jack Schmidling (I will be arrested for refusing to buy Israeli oranges):
Contrib. post:
>Jack was never widely known was he?  Certainly Jack would qualify for
>the Net.Legends list if he's posted all over the map.  Did he?
 He was pretty widely known in alt.revisionism; he used to post in a bunch of
other groups - the usual suspects for crossposts from AR: alt.activism,
alt.conspiracy, alt.activism.d, alt.discrimination, alt.censorship.
talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,talk.politics.mideast,soc.culture.jewish...
(Contributor) thinks anybody who dares sign all their posts "ARF" in a group
scanned by the ZUMABOT qualifies for net.legend status.
--
 Jack is the reason I stopped reading t.p.m.  Well, one of the
reasons, anyway.  It should be noted that Jack shows up in
rec.crafts.brewing, from time to time, and is reported to be just
as obnoxious there, but in a different way.
 (A friend who graduated read rec.crafts.brewing often, and
mentioned Schmidling's presence.  You'd have to check r.c.b to make sure.)
--
>>>Are you sure it's the same guy?
>>One hundred percent positive.
> Jack Schmidling is not just a Usenet kook and a suburban-Chicago lawn kook,
>he is an internationally famous amateur radio kook also.  Anyone remember
>Jacks old .sig trumpeting his "ARF" (Amateur Radio Forum) on 14.313 MHz?
>Jack managed to use roughly 40 lines of text in that baby.
 The one with the lighthouse image?
> Anyway, Schmidling & Co. staked-out 14.313 as their personal turf and
>set up a swearing/yelling/threatening encounter group that, due to the
>magic of ionospheric propogation, interfered with the normal activities
>of amateur radio operators worldwide.  The last I heard, the FCC had
>cracked-down on the 14.313 mob, issuing $10,000 fines and such, and the
>frequency seems to be rather quiet now.  Anyone know if Jack got caught
>up in the dragnet?  Is that why he is now the master.loon of rec.arts.brewing
>rather than rec.radio.amateur.misc?
 He's back in alt.revisionism again, repeating his oft-disproved claim that
Barry Shein maliciously altered a post of his when reposting it in another
article.
 Dan "Karnes/Artimus and now Schmidling? McElwaine's return may be right
around
the corner" Case
--
 Schmidling mini-FAQ available, thanks to Ted Frank (q.v.). He's also one of
the few net.legends to have his video publicized by Garbage magazine, and to
be interviewed by the CBS news; had some odd ideas about lawns... Formerly
sometimes believed to actually be the same person as Dan Gannon (q.v.);
seems to have settled down a good bit recently. A miniFAQ of some former
posts is available.

L. Detweiler (you are all TENTACLES of the CYPHERpunk anarchoSYNDICALIST
 pseudospoofing CONSPIRACY; everyone who contacts me via post or email is a
 tentacle of a single Medusa):
 All information relevant has been deleted (probably by the cypherpunk
pseudospoofers); ask around - old-timers can tell you about him, through
"safe" avenues (like email). Warning: attempting to disillusion him of
his theories usually results in threatening mail and getting incorporated
into said theories. Handle With Extreme Care. Appeared occasionally on
the news.* hierarchy (for instance, news.admin.policy), crossposted to hell
and back. Author of the Internet Anonymity FAQ and the InterNet Writer
Resource
Guide, pre-legendary status... first name apparently Lawrence or Larry.
Contrib. post:
>I think this article was some sort of satire but I fell asleep on
>the spacebar and, ya know, I just don't get it.  Anyone care to boil it
>down to a sentence or two?
 Yes. L. Detweiler, the guy who posts as an12070, and who also posts
(now less frequently) under his own account
"[e-mail]", is a paranoid psychotic (or
someone doing a good parody of one) who believes there is a nationwide
conspiracy out to get him, said conspiracy consisting of almost every
prominent cryptographer on the net. He periodically rants against this
conspiracy. He makes lots of extremely bizarre claims, such as stating
that every person posting articles saying he's nuts is in fact a
pseudonym of the great conpiratorial group. He's pretty much
ignorable, although he has sent death threats to a large number of
people that some have taken seriously.
--
 ...This *may* all be a "front"; he comes across as relatively sane in
email (just don't mention Nick Szabo or Tim C. May...). There's really no
way to tell, which may actually be the point of all this... Was peculiarly
insistent on wanting to become the poster of *this* FAQ as well (to the
point of my having to tell the news.answers team "Don't approve this unless I
send it to you"...). Posted as ld231782@<various>.lance.colostate.edu (L.
Detweiler) and [e-mail] (various constantly-changing identities)
- this last address has been disabled by the anon server's sysadmin, and was
been proven to be him on several different occasions, although he was hiding
it fiercely for a time... his Colorado address has gone also (2/94), according
to the sysadmin; this impending loss apparently prompted the Blacknet notices.
He's not been seen since from that address - but beware: anyone who "talk"s
you may actually be either Detweiler or a Tentacle incognito... MUAaahahaaa!!!
 The person posting to (among other places) news.admin.* as [e-mail] is,
if not this entity, making a good run at attempting to imitate Detweiler
(posting to all the same old places, antagonizing Tim May, having S. Boxx and
Blacknet show up in tmp@'s constantly-changing .sigs, assuming a dizzying
variety of identities...) - but with somewhat better material this time
around... and given Detweiler's bee-in-the-bonnet, impersonating him
successfully would in some sense make somebody *be* him... Since netcom folks
are allowed to choose their own IDs, there's no real evidence that "tmp" is
any sort of a guest account (as some have postulated). Posted (maybe) as
[e-mail] (various identities); has since been kicked off Netcom,
allegedly for posting, somewhat altered, a piece of email from the support
staff there. One [e-mail] (Sue D. Nym) got kicked off shortly later when
(as one Cypherpunks-list person apparently got notified via email) they
discovered that "the same person who had formerly paid for tmp's account was
now paying for nym's", thus garnering "And we *mean* it!" points... *May* be
also [e-mail], but if so is not posting from there. Keep yer eyes
peeled, kids - he may be back at any time, in any disguise...

Abian (IMAGINATION IS THE ESSENCE THE REST ARE DETAILS - I deserve a Nobel
 prize for this):
 Hangs out in the sci.* hierarchy, as in sci.physics . "NASA's exclusive
goal, ambition and aim must be the reorbiting Venus [into Earth's orbit]
by the year 2004. Otherwise NASA will lose its viability. That wee should
not permit ! never ! never !" Is convinced that altering Earth's orbit
and tilt is the only way to cure humanity of its evil deviance; puts subject
lines in ALL CAPS. In Real Life tm, is a retired tenured math professor at a
Iowa State U. A miniFAQ of Abian, critiqued MST3K style, is available. Has
been interviewed by the BBC, and broadcast...
Contrib. post:
>Abian [from his .sig]:
>``TIME HAS INERTIA. EQUIVALENCE OF TIME AND MASS: (1/T)+(1/log M) = 1
(ABIAN).
Isn't that how time flies or crawls?  Certainly you've seen this effect around
the beginning and ending of your workdays/weeks, people!
>  ALTER EARTH'S ORBIT AND TILT - STOP EPIDEMICS OF CANCER, CHOLERA, AIDS,
ETC.
Well, if you knock Earth out of orbit, the sky's the limit. (Although it
would be a darn shame if I couldn't spend a comfortable retirement in Florida
that's pending for me in, ohh, 2035?)
>  VENUS MUST BE GIVEN A NEAR EARTH-LIKE ORBIT TO BECOME A BORN AGAIN EARTH''
Nevermind. I should take up horticulture while I can...
>-- "waiting for the tag-team match:
>      Marilyn Vos Savant & Robert McElwaine vs.
>        Alexander Abian & Ludwig Plutonium"
Hmm...those team-ups could be destructive could they?  (I'd prefer an
ABIAN/MCELWAINE vs. Sagan/Plutonium match.)
--
>   I read an interesting short article in Omni a few years back.  Some
>   scientist (don't remember who) suggested that earth's environment could be
>   improved by nuking the moon.
>I think I read it -- or at least something similar.
Aiee. How Soon They Forget (tm).
The "scientist" in question was/is none other than Alexander Abian.
Yes, he may have moved on to "reorbiting Venus to make it a born-again
Earth", but he began on a smaller scale, closer to home.
--
 ...you forgot to mention that you can also find
Dr. Abian's work in the Weekly World News from time to time. Yes, the
bastion of supermarket journalism has indeed employed our own Dr.
Abian for what nefarious purposes I can not remember. But ooh, it was a doozy!
--
Posts as [e-mail] (Alexander Abian).

Serdar Argic (What a bunch of turkeys):
 Common monickers: zumaBOT, "that d*mn*d turkey". Greps for "turkey" much
as Kibo greps for "Kibo", and follows up to many appearances thereof
with long rants about Armenian genocide as practiced on Turks, or Muslims (or
was it vice-versa?), which bear little if any relevance to the original post
other than (usually) quoting a line or two out of it. Will happily follow up
to Ken Arromdee's Stuffed/Leftover Turkey .sig bait... Usually crossposts
to hell and back, also. Widely believed to have been a script for
auto-posting for Some Time Now. Can be sighted on soc.culture.turkey and
alt.revisionism, usually. If you really wanted to. His sysadmin, Ahmet Cosar,
has been talked at, and is *not* cooperative in the least with the wishes of
the rest of UseNet that Serdar get a real life. Believed to have formerly
posted under the name Hasan Mutlu; see FAQ mentioned below. Other names
sometimes associated with it are Joachim Mattillo/Ilan Rabinowitz/Supric

Contrib. post:
 Actually, the repititious daily bombing of USENET in this manner
was started a couple of years ago ['92?] from the account of Hasan B.
Mutlu from an AT&T site.  The real Hasan B. Mutlu, based on an
examination of conferences and transactions by an author of that
name, is/was one of those AT&T software wizards.  The manual
reposting of files containing canned replies, preceded by a
custom-written reply-specific insult, could have easily been
coded into a program whether or not the two Mutlus were the
same person.  This Mutlu net.personality (referred to as such
in deference to the real Hasan who may be a different person
that may be suffering repercussions due to the USENET entity)
then moved around to a number of other sites, using that name
or masked behind other nicknames (either getting disciplined
by AT&T, or after the entity was discovered to have been a
hacker breaking into the real Hasan's account).  Whatever
the name, the behaviour is obvious.  For a while a running
joke was a weekly Mutloids analysis done out of Australia,
which tracked the infestations, ranked the appearance of
file repostings, etc.  Traffic was considerably higher for the
two weeks preceding the past two American Thanksgivings,
also popularly referred to as you-know-what day.
--
 One "Suha Artun", whose path also goes through anatolia.org, ("anatolia"
apparently translates to "Turkey", by the way) has shown up on soc.history
doing the same thing (xpost, Armenia, etc.) (2/94), and a Mr. RooT from
anatolia has shown up to protest the group alt.cancel.bots, formed specially
to
carry cancel messages for the 'bot (subscribe if you want to automatically not
see the bot's posts at your site), in news.admin.* . Other recent arrivals
are [e-mail] (Arif Kiziltug) and [e-mail] (Yalin Ekici),
although these two do not set followups to soc.culture.turkish, post much
less often (~ once/day), and don't crosspost *quite* as widely. Finally (?),
Argic apparently disappeared entirely in April '94, one step ahead of a
petition drive aimed at UUNet to ask them to ask him to tone things down;
a representative from UUNet said "the site anatolia has not existed on UUNET
since April 94."
 Does not answer posts directly; cannot be e-mailed to (although Cosar can be;
see the miniFAQ). Bleah. May actually be a small group of people who have
taken
over maintenance of the posting script. Representative quote: "There are now
none left of the 2.5 million Turks slaughtered by Armenians in the early years
of this century" or some similar combination of templates/words to that
effect.
 Because this FAQ includes the word "turkey", it may well be followed-up to if
it's ever posted, although cross-posting to a moderated group may slow it down
a bit. Minifaqs with a bit of info are available, as well as the
alt.fan.serdar-argic FAQ. One note: as far as anyone who's read history can
tell, the Turks slaughtered the Armenians, directly contrary to this entity's
multitudinous claims... Has (2/94) claimed to have virtual lawyers, quoting
their success record; possibly rented them from John Palmer (q.v.), and (5/94)
claimed to have a doctorate ("Dr. Argic") by one of the people railing against
the Uunet petition. Can be emailed to at [e-mail] (Ahmed
Cosar); be warned that *any* mail to this address earns you a threatening
email
to your sysadmin complaining of harassment... A person from anatolia (*not*
"Mr. RooT") showed up on news.admin.* in 2/94 asking how to set up mail maps;
this may be a sign that mail to zuma.UUCP may actually start going somewhere
(bit-bucket, most likely). Joel Furr (q.v.) has released a Serdar Argic
T-shirt. Posted from (among others) [e-mail] (Serdar Argic).

Jack Sarfatti:
 Posts long strange posts on physics, consciousness, and metaphysics, many
of which do not make much sense to practitioners of the above fields.
Used to crosspost to hell and back. Can be seen in the sci.* groups and
alt.consciousness. A small collection of posts is available. *Not* a
"crackpot"
in the classic sense; has a Ph.D. in physics and understands the field quite
well - but tends to use it to delve into philosophical concepts and outre'
theories rather deeper than many other physicists care to read about. Also
posts on and off to sci.psychology about connectionism and perception, and
the neuro-psychological implications thereof.
Contrib. post:
 Jack Sarfatti is a physicist who posts on sci.physics.
He believes in faster-than-light communication through quantum effects
and backwards-in-time communication due to the existence of advanced
solutions of wave equations (which exist mathematically, but.... it's a
long story).  I post to sci.physics a lot as well, and used to take him
to task for various errors, and finally he got so annoyed at me he wrote
letters to me, the chair of my department, and a dean, threatening to
sue me for libel.  He has done similar things to a number of people [note:
Jack says the "similar things" did *not* include specifically writing to
anyone
else's Dean/chair/superior]. I am not immensely fond of him, so I was amused
when Kibo picked up on a recent post of Sarfatti's in which he mentioned the
notion of "beables" as an alternative to the usual concept of "observables."
 Since then "beables" have become a bit of a fad; over on alt.sex there are
now
some people under the impression that "beabling" is some sort of vile act
people do while watching X-rated movies, etc. etc..  One has to read
alt.kibology to get the total picture.
--
 Has written to at least one poster's dean and dept. chair, complaining about
their sense of humor in posting that the 4 moderators of sci.physics were
pretending to be Abian, Plutonium, Hannu and Sarfatti in order to drive folks
to sci.physics.research, leading the chair to start asking (in jest) in the
halls "Did you know <poster> was a vicious clown?"... Says that the rationale
for the letters (as mentioned in the Contrib. Post) was *not* the pointing-out
of supposed errors, but instead various libels and untrue anecdotes that
appeared concurrently with the "error-corrections". A story *was* going around
at least one physics dept. (which is probably at least as false as any of
these
entries; Jack himself denies it utterly - but you know how urban legends grow)
that Jack used to tell people Murray Gell-Mann found his ideas interesting,
and that someone finally checked with Gell-Mann - and found the complete quote
was "Your ideas are interesting, but [looking at watch] I'm late for an
appointment." Posts from [e-mail] (Jack Sarfatti).

Hannu Poropudas (Wanna see gifs of my daughter's theories?):
 Posts theories about space potatoes, made up of combinations of positive-
and negative-matter neutrinos, in sevens, to the sci.* hierarchy
(sci.physics). Somewhat entertaining. Had a leave of absence, due to his
sysadmin responding to protests about his changing his userid with every
post so people couldn't killfile him; he says it was actually because he told
Scott Chase (sci.physics FAQ person) that he was asking God to put Scott in
God's killfile... lost more credibility when he revealed that the
official-looking name he kept referencing was in actuality his wee daughter,
to whom much of this information had come in the form of dreams, and who gives
him further leads in the form of crayoned drawings. Has been "harrassed" by
Ludwig Plutonium (q.v.), who has decided Abian is an AI experiment. Posts as
[e-mail] (Hannu Poropudas).

Dan Gannon (Let me explain by reposting the *same* Holocaust-was-fake
 trash; I didn't write this, I just scanned it in. And you are all VILE
 LITTLE LIARS for saying so! don't forget my high IQ and my theory of the
 universe having 23 - nope, wait a minute, make that 25-dimensions):
 The original UseNet "let's post Nazi revisionist junk in quantity and
never reply to debunking, except by reposting the same stuff" person. Has
occasionally *tried* to answer posts debunking his anti-Holocaust views; was
normally not very successful, and quickly went back to crossposting his
articles to hell and back, followed by the self-appointed Dan Gannon
Cleanup Crew, who spend selflessly of their time and effort debunking
Dan *every* time (Dan posted to soc.college, as far as anyone can tell,
in order that maybe just *one* of his multiplicities of posts would catch
some uninformed person's eye and fool them into believing his articles...
similarly for the other, ever-changing newsgroups on his Newsgroups:
line. One is reminded of the IHR people who attempted to take out ads in
college newspapers across the USA, succeeding once [I believe; I may have
this confused with the CODOH and Bradley Smith's ads, which have been placed
successfully several times and laughed down many more times]).
 Alt.revisionism created mainly to have some place to redirect followups from
the cleanup crew; most old-time soc.history readers have killfiles because of
him and Serdar. Soc.history.moderated's creation also mainly motivated by him
and Serdar... Runs a BBS in Portland, OR that is known for attracting neo-nazi
punks of various varieties. For a while, long ago, posted under a multiplicity
of identities; retreated to only the Gannon one only when finally caught out.
A mini-faq of gannon rebutting this entry, and several others rebutting
Gannon,
is available; eerily reminiscent of the "main event", without the negative
connotations thereof... Has posted as "Ralph Winston", "Maynard", "Pete
Faust",
and "Foxy Roxy" in the past. Made #7 on the list of "most evil
net.personalities", just behind Serdar Argic.
Contrib. post:
>I'm new to this thread and don't know who Gannon is or what he is famous or
>infamous for.  Can someone give me a clue??  Why is what he posts considered
>drivel??  --KAC
 In a nutshell:
 Gannon and the now dissolved organization he patsies for, the IHR,
maintain the following thesis:
 1. No Jew, Gypsy or other person was purposely killed as part of a
national policy by the Nazi govt during WWII.
 2. That there certainly were no mass killing operations, no gas chambers,
no gas vans, no mass executions in Nazi Germany during the period 1933-1945.
 For example, they completely deny things like the Einsatzgruppen who
wandered the countryside in Eastern Europe executing Jews and others,
and certainly deny events like Babi Yar. How over 30,000 bodies got
into the same ravine, dead, in a few days is to them merely one of
life's great mysteries, perhaps they all tripped and fell...
 3. They assert that the massive deaths in concentration camps and
similar both did not occur (e.g. all the Jews and Gypsies actually ran
off to the USSR and lived happily ever after), and that they were the
fault of the Allies, particularly the US, UK and USSR.
 See, their theory is that it was Allied bombing that caused food
shortages, typhus, perhaps the noise made SS guards' guns go off into
lined up prisoner's backs, it's hard to know. But it was all the
Allies' fault, they're guilty of all the supposed Nazi war crimes. And
no one died anyhow. How this happened years before any bombing of Nazi
territory occurred is never quite explained.
 4. Gannon and the IHR are closely allied with bona-fide Nazis and
white extremist and virulent anti-semitic individuals and organizations.
For example, when Gannon is not busy claiming contradictory rewrites
of history he is often found typing in long tirades about how the Jews
are responsible for every conceivable evil that's occurred in western
history, including but not limited to the souring of milk and rain at
picnics. Seriously, it's your typical jews control the banks, jews
control the media, jews control all major western govts, etc. type of
rants. Some of the folks he likes to quote have written such notable
works as "The Hitler We Loved and Why". He's also promoted the typical
"Blacks have smaller brains than Whites" kind of garbage.
 There's more, but that should be enough for anyone who isn't two tacos
short of a combo plate.
--
 Formerly posted as [e-mail] (Dan Gannon). Started posting again
from [e-mail], then [e-mail], in 12/93, apparently
from having lost the teleport account after request-bombing one Holocaust
information server...
 Update: Dateline: 3/4/94. Netcom.com (through which banished.com feeds) gave
Dan an ultimatum -  that in the future he may only post to the following
newsgroups through them:
 alt.revisionism, talk.politics.misc, soc.culture.german, soc.culture.jewish,
 soc.rights.human, alt.discrimination, alt.conspiracy, alt.illuminati,
 alt.individualism, alt.mindcontrol, alt.politics.correct,
alt.politics.reform,
 alt.censorship (copied from a "Goodbye!" post Dan made on soc.history)...
 Dan *specifically* tells us netcom.com has forbidden him to post to
(or to post revisionist stuff to - he's not clear on this [but it seems it's
"post to" after all]) soc.history, soc.history.moderated [actually, this is
somewhat redundant], talk.politics.mideast, alt.activism,
 alt.society.civil-liberties, alt.society.civil-liberty, sci.skeptic,
 soc.culture.europe, soc.culture.austria, soc.culture.polish,
 soc.culture.soviet, soc.culture.usa, soc.politics, soc.veterans, soc.answers,
 alt.society.civil-disob, alt.society.revolution, alt.society.etrnl.vigilanc,
 alt.politics.usa.misc, alt.politics.libertarian, alt.politics.reform,
 alt.politics.media, alt.cabal, alt.journalism.criticism,
 alt.extropians.forbidden.topics, alt.flame.dan.gannon.nazi.scum      [Note:
I am NOT a Nazi!!!] (says Dan), alt.society.resistance,
--- And EVERY OTHER NEWSGROUP as well! --- (says Dan).
This has been a Net.Legend News Minute...

Riley G. Mat(t)hews:
Collated from various people:
>Oh, who was that ex-NYC cop over in sci.skeptic a few months ago who was
>offering to use his psychic powers to fix the Mars orbiter and the Hubble
>telescope? ...
 Riley, alias Riley G., alias The Thin Blue Line, alias Riley G. Mathews.
Proper skeptics (or, as Riley liked to call them, septics) never were
convinced he actually *was* an ex-NYC cop. ... can't remember
whether or not he posted from DELPHI.
--
 Ah, yes, "Riley G".  Although one of my personal favorites, especially
after Bob Ingria over on sci.skeptic challenged him to give Bob's personal
information and Riley got it *all* wrong, Riley is rather new, doesn't
cross-post into places like rec.gardens, and disappeared during ("my good
friend") Uri Geller's recent tour, so is mostly unknown.
--
 Ahh yes! Riley. Most of the sci.skeptic people ended up calling him Rile E
Coyote, I think. He sounded like he must have gotten his brain from Acme,
that's for sure. He used to post letters ostensibly from The Amazing Randi
and then flame, flame, flame away about them (the letters certainly sounded
like Randi might have written most of them -- they certainly took Riley
apart. Why Riley posted stuff against his own position just so he could
make (badly written!) retorts to them in public is a bit confusing to me...).
--
>Riley's touchiness about Randi knowing where he lives, and presumably his
>real name, motorcycle licence number, etc seem quite at odds with the very
>casual way in which he posted the names and phone numbers of people here,
>along with those of innocent bystanders he claimed to be neighbours of his
>targets.
 They're not really at odds.  If Riley is really as paranoid as he
sometimes seems to be (viz his claims to have ``phone traps'' on his
phone to list the originating phone numbers of all incoming calls, to
have ``motion trackers'' and video cameras around his house, etc.),
his knowledge of where his opponents live and what their phone numbers
are, etc., gives him a potential edge on them---an edge which he loses
if they know the corresponding information about him.  Also, Riley
posts purported information about people both to show off (and, in the
first few times he did this, to imply he got the information
psychically), and to serve as an implied threat (see his comments to
me that he could pay me an unexpected visit because he knew my phone
number).  It's the bully syndrome: he gets to do other people, but no
way do they get to do him.  And realizing that they can do him must
drive him even crazier than he already is.
--
 Has reappeared; was pleasant for a bit, then returned to flamebait...
Posts from [e-mail] (Riley G).

Ted Frank: (What's this about James "Trashcan" Kirk?)
 Alt.folklore.urban has *no* loons. Really. An a.f.u "old hat", ted
is considered the master (after Kibo) of the "trolling" post - one with
deliberate misinformation inserted in order to stir up endless followups from
unwary people. Generally crossposts, as a clue, to
alt.ted.frank.troll.troll.troll - but so *many* people ignore the Newsgroups:
and Followups: lines. ted (along with most of the rest of afu) regrets ever
reviving the Monty-Hall-gives-a-Chevy-Nova-to-Winston-Churchill thread ("1/2!"
"No, you idiot, 2/3!") that in 11/93 took over for a time a.f.u,
rec.arts.startrek.misc, alt.sex.bondage, alt.fan.hofstadter,
soc.culture.british, alt.(fan?.)rush-limbaugh, and maybe another I'm
forgetting; when that finally died down, a "Robbie the Robot" thread was
spawned from it with one simple touch from his newsposter - from a *.sig*
reference. (Kibo (q.v.) is also an acknowledged trolling expert, much to the
dismay of many newsgroups, including rec.org.mensa ...) Hangs out in a.f.u and
misc.legal a lot; also soc.college, denigrating fraternities (or possibly just
those who inhabit them). A perennial high-number-of-posts stat-list inhabiter.
Posts as [e-mail] (Ted Frank).

snopes and Lasner (Paul is dead!) (The sixties started in 149^H^H942!):
 Okay, I lied: afu *does* have a loon. However, in typical afu fashion,
our one recurrent loon is made up of two posters, who are rather harmless
when separated, but who attain critical posting-mass when both have net
access simultaneously... A.f.u veterans will recall the definitive refutation
of the Beatles' "Paul is dead" troll/myth by snopes, the incredible tenacity
of Lasner (even when massively proven wrong), and the amazing amounts of
cross-sniping between the two. Also the flamewars that erupted over the
UL Uncle Don/"That oughta hold the little bastards"... neither one admitted
to thinking it actually happened - but the fallout from snopes' trying to
deny Don ever existed and Lasner's arguing that he in fact had was vast...
Contrib. post:
 Charles isn't a bad person, except for a few annoying traits.  Unfortunately,
each of those traits has led to incredibly long flame wars because he will
never, ever, ever admit he was wrong or allow a subject to drop.  Those
traits are:
 1. Thinks that PDP-8s are the pinacle of computing technology, and will flame
anybody who thinks that C or C++ on a modern computer is better than
assembler on a PDP-8.
 2. Thinks that decades begin and end when he declares them to have begun or
ended.  I think he decided on this stance after he said that "The Battle of
New Orleans" song came out in the 60s.  When somebody pointed out that it was
released in 1958, rather than admitting his mistake, he redefined the 60s.
 Unfortunately, snopes will also not let the famous "snopes vs. Lasner" flame
wars drop, so I usually end up dropping both of them in my kill file for a
month or so when these things crop up.
--
Lasner, for instance, has strong feelings about "Strawberry Fields Forever".
--
 snopes has been seen on-net only rarely since shortly after the California
earthquake (he did survive it though); Real Life apparently reclaimed him for
a while, but he did return in spectacular fashion with a troll to the
rec.arts.startrek groups about shadows on the Enterprise in a vacuum which
went
strongly for at least two weeks. Ted Frank is thought to be contemplating
countermeasures. Post as {[e-mail] | [e-mail]} (snopes)
(real name: David P. Mikkelson) and [e-mail] (Charles Lasner).

Ludwig Plutonium (This newsgroup is contained inside a plutonium electron):
 A classic crackpot (in the scientific sense). Believes that the element
plutonium has a special significance in the universe, as well as existing
as one atom at the center of his brain. Floats around the sci.* hierarchy,
(sci.physics, sci.physics.fusion, sci.math) as well as (sometimes)
alt.religion.kibology. Kibo (q.v.) is rumored to have an archive of his
songs on science-type subjects set to popular tunes and carols. Can prove
or disprove any unsolved mathematical theorem in a matter of weeks, using
q-adic numbers (*don't* ask). Entertaining, once you get used to his style;
his songs are actually singable (although I wouldn't really want to try).
He's not at *all* happy with general relativity, but is content with quantum
mechanics, apparently...
 Currently set against both Abian *and* Hannu (q.v.) (has since apparently
made up with Abian, to the point of dedicating a Jurassic Park parody to
him, but still needles him on occasion)... Is apparently employed as a dish
washer, and has limited himself to 3 posts per day to the Net; is slowly
posting "Ludwig Plutonium, the Chosen One" (his massive autobiography) to his
newsgroup (alt.sci.physics.plutonium) and to a.r.k . Was off-net for a month
or so for allegedly posting some sort of Jewish slur against someone who
complained to Dartmouth, but apparently this has been cleared up, and he's
merrily posting away again. Posts as [e-mail] (Ludwig
Plutonium).

Ted Holden:
Contrib. post:
 Has Ted Holden got net access back yet? He lost it when someone on
talk.origins figured out that he didn't actually work for the site he
was posting through, and informed them of it. For those unacquainted
with the Tedster, his hobby-horses were:
 1) Immanuel Velikovsky (_Worlds_in_Collision_) knows more astrophysics
than all astronomers put together. God has been playing billiards
with the solar system during the last few millenia.
 2) The ADA language sucks.
What really set Ted apart was the invective he indulged in against
those who asked him to provide any scientific evidence for his claims
(well, actually, mostly just #1, there was some sympathy for his views
on #2), and the tired list of "astronomer jokes" he used to post.
--
 Ted only got boring once you realized he has a loop time of
about 6-12 months. Up until then he was quite a hoot.
--
 The good folks on t.o. tell the sad tale that Ted lost his newsfeed a couple
of months ago, when the company from which he was posting discovered he had
been using their site, even though they had never heard of him! Now that Ted
has to pay for net access, he apparently has no desire to post mega-messages
anymore.
--
 however, just to tide you over,
I'll point out that the inimitable Ted Holden is definitely back on the
net and is quite definitely posting the same huge reams of "arguments"
that he's been posting for years (still without modification or response
to the counter-arguments) and has recently declared total victory over
talk.origins because few people bothered to respond to all the "arguments"
in his n-th reposting of his proof that Venus had was recently ejected
from Jupiter, leaving that big red spot behind as evidence.
 However, no critique of Holden, the man, would be complete without an
examination of his own considerable programming talents, as demonstrated
in this truly impressive bit of code that he actually had published as
part of an article in support of Velikovsky's theories:
<begin included text>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: [e-mail] (Peter Lamb)
Subject: Re: Holden and the C programming language
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 23:40:20 GMT

 Actually, feel compelled to encourage Ted in his efforts to improve
his programming style. The program which he posted and has had criticised
in this thread is a *vast* improvement to what he had published in
Aeon 2(4), p115.
[Note: Ted has denied ever writing this code in this form, but admits the
"while" loop; Peter insists that this is what got published under his name, at
least, in Aeon. Last I heard, both of them had retired from the fray to
furiously dig through boxes of old magazines to try to find the Aeon issue in
question...]
---------------begin Ted code; indenting per original---------------
#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>
int i,j,k,l;
long ii,jj,kk;
double a,b,c,aa,bb,cc,dd;
double x,y,z,xx,yy,zz;
main()
{
xx = 550;
while(xx > 1)
{ printf("\n num of args was %d\n", ii);
exit();
}
xx=jj; yy=kk;
zz=pow(xx,.666);
aa=yy/zz;
printf(\n\n ratio = %f\n", aa);
}
---------------end Ted code---------------
The while loop in this program continues to fascinate me.
<end included text>
Something like this, you can imagine, would have been far more difficult
to program in Ada....
--
Posts from [e-mail] (Ted Holden).

Shub-Internet:
 The lurking horror at the bottom of the TCP-IP protocol; where the bits go
after they hit the bitbucket. *Don't* call it up if you're not *sure* you can
put it down again... Last seen (3/94) incarnated as a pair of lawyers named
Cthul^H^H^H^Hanter & Siegel, posting GREEN CARDS & Spam!; before that (1/94),
giggling from orion.*.edu, having swallowed Clarence Thomas IV's brain; before
*that*, sighted on rec.arts.sf.starwars (12/7/93) [Dick Depew (q.v.), oddly
enough, was a great help in stemming that outburst]. (I know there's more, but
my backups seem to have evaporated...)
Contrib. post:
ObUL: .sigs over ten lines will awaken Shub-Internet.
--

Daniel Drucker (14 Year Old Learning-Curve Wizard):
Contrib. post:
 In 1992, Danny Drucker appeared on several newsgroups [for ~3-4 weeks],
alt.folklore.computers especially, with a signature that called himself a
"14 Year Old Networks Wizard". However, by his behaviour and general
cluelessness, it would be difficult to call him "larval stage", never mind
"wizard". When he got roundly flamed over that, he changed it to "C and
Lisp Wizard", and promptly demonstrated just how little he knew on either
of those topics. His sig mututated to several other "14 year old xxxx
wizard" variants.  As well as the self-proclaimed "wizard" title, he
always had eminently warlordable signatures - and the worst thing was
that they promised to add his ham packet radio id later, as if this sig
really needed something extra to make it just that much more terrible.
 I think he eventually got the hint and stopped calling himself a "wizard",
but not before the phrase "14 year old xxxx wizard" became a catch phrase
on alt.fan.warlord and several other places. (Like all catch phrases, it
had its lifetime, and now it's over, ok?)
--
>Seriously, was he really _that_ annoying for _that_ long that he gets
>to be in the Net.Legends list?
 No longer than a couple of weeks. Which is about three or four eras in
Usenet. Long enough for the phrase "14-year-old _____ wizard" to become
part of the Usenet vocabulary.
 Perhaps Mr. Drucker could go into the net.legends list for another reason
beside the above: quickest evolution from clueless newbie to normal Usenetter.
Where the normal response to flames is more flames (e.g. Barbara
A[bernathy].),
Daniel quietly stored up the clues he received, thus becoming a properly
functioning member of Usenet in what I think is probably a record time. Have
to
respect him for that.
--
 The elitism displayed then was both unusually pointed (maybe it was around
one
of the exam periods, I forget) and much more ad hominem than it usually gets
when someone's clueless.  And Danny, er, Daniel, was only clueless for a week
or so after someone first jumped on him.  He'd been just fine for the previous
month, during which nobody objected to his participation.
 It was an interesting situation, sociologically speaking.
--
 He's still around; quieter, but there. A photo of him may be found at the
URL ftp://bombadil.ori.org/pub/akt/photos/daniel.jpg ... Posted from
[e-mail] (Daniel Drucker); now posts from [e-mail] .

John_-_Winston (Dear People Who Breath Air: ):
 John F. Winston (I have *no* idea what the F. stands for) believes
semi-passionately in alien visitors and UFOs; hangs out at those newsgroups a
lot in consequence thereof, as well as sci.skeptic. This in itself would not
distinguish him, but he frequently crossposts "interesting" articles from
those groups, or from Weekly World News, or from aliens from the future who
have travelled back to talk to him, into alt.religion.kibology, in the teeth
of He Who Greps. This if nothing else qualifies him for "legendary" status.
Likes (or possibly believes(!)) the X-Files for some reason.
--
From the a.r.k FAQ: "IS JOHN_-_WINSTON SERIOUS?  AND WHAT'S WITH THE `_-_'?"
I'd like to answer that question in two parts.  First, John_-_ is a
perfectly normal alt.religion.kibology household word. And second, the _-_
is actually a single letter in Chippewa meaning, approximately, "sideways
schwa". How this relates contextually to the information he posts about
UFOs is something only the Reptoids from Behind The Green Galaxy can tell us.
--
 Waitaminute. I thought that John_-_Winston was the same person as the
[e-mail]. I'm sure he's signed a couple of times
as "John Winston", even if he was normally just "John F. W.". I've seen
him posting to alt.alien.visitors until summer 1991, when he disappeared.
Some time later John_-_Winston made his appearance to the net.
--
Photon belt?
Buckled.
Photon shoes?
Laced.
Thinking cap?
Off.
Okay, we're ready for "John"....
[e-mail] wrote:
: Subject: What's The Buzz.
:   I always love a mystery and there is one I would like to check out in New
: Mexico, USA.  Here is some information about it............................
:   We'll start our trip by way of northern New Mixico, specifically the
                                                ^^^^^^
Me, I prefer the original Mixico.  Mmmmm....just thinking about that
authentic Mixican food gets my mouth watering.  I took Spinich for two years
in High School and a year in college, so I never have a problem getting
around Mixico City or the Axetek ruins nearby.
Spell-checker, anyone?
: tourist town of Taos.  Taos is best known to travellers for its excellent
: skiing and the Native-American beauty of the Taos Pueblo.
:   Yet there's something strange going on, hidden behind the artsy galleries,
: gift shops and ski lifts.  Whatever it is, it's in the air.  You can feel
: it - or better yet, hear it.  Especially at night when the town quiets down
: and the tourists are gone.  It is an ominous, low-frequency buzzing sound.
: The sound permeates businesses, houses, walls, windows and brain cells.  It
: is driving farm animals, pets and people in the Taos area out of their
: gourds.
Well then, "John", you'd fit right in.
:   No one knows what's causing the buzzing and no one can tell where it is
: coming from.  The sound is everywhere and cannot be traced to its source.
Whoops. Sorry. That's just me...that darn Thai food does it to me every time.
: Thinking that it might be part of a secret Air Force project, the town's
: leaders contacted the military.  The Pentagon claims they have no connection
: to the buzzing.
But, as we all know, WHATEVER the Pentagon says is actually the OPPOSITE!
Yes, folks, every day is OPPOSITE DAY with "John".
:   Not far from Taos is the super-secret city of Los Alamos, where government
: eggheads are busy developing new super-weapons and Star Wars projects.
Calls
: were placed to Los Alamos and, specifically, Sandia Laboratories, a
: government funded tech-company responsible for atomic weapons research and
: other dark projects.
GASP!  How DARE the U.S. Government have secret projects and not tell us!
:   Sandia denied having any connection; however, they did send a specialized
: team of acoustical experts to study the sound.  The Sandia studs brought
: in all their expensive toys and  high-tech gizmos.  After months of study,
: they issued their report.In a nitshell, it said that they didn't have a clue
: as to where the noise was coming from.
Well, perhaps if they took it out of the nitshell, they could get a better
look at it.
:   To this day, the buzzing continues and no one has come forward to claim
: responsibility.  Mean while, the people of Taos go on with their lives,
: trying to ignore the insessant buzz.  Everyone in town has their own theory
: as to what is causing it.  Some say it's wind rushing through the nearby
: Rio Grande Gorge, while others suspect the government.  Still other believe
: the sound may have an extraterrestrial origin, or even suggest that satanic
: cultists are at work.  Whatever the cause, the buzzing continues.
: JW Don't ask me what it is.
Don't worry.
: Source Of Information:  Far Out, winter, 1993.
                          ^^^^^^^
I'll say.
--
 Has also gotten a reputation on alt.conspiracy, alt.alien.visitors,
alt.dreams,
alt.pagan, and alt.mythology... frequently gets his posts MST3K-ified on
a.r.k,
as in the example above. Posted from [e-mail] .
Frequently.
(Unfortunately, he has finally discovered Delphi, and has lost his middle
thingy - however, he'll always be John_-_ to us...) Currently posts as
John Winston <[e-mail]>.

Dave Hayes (Impeach the Net.Cabal!; Ignore it, it'll go away on its own):
 Self-proclaimed news.* (news.groups in particular) "Biggest Clown". Delights
in arguing with people over details there, apparently mostly for the
entertainment value. Has stretched several threads there beyond all logic.
Claims to have reasons for everything he does, and to be speaking for all the
"little people" of UseNet who do not, cannot, or will not speak for
themselves,
leading to someone's coining the phrase "This is UseNet. Speak up for yourself
or Dave Hayes will speak for you...". Has been awfully quiet recently (1/93);
may be Up To Something [returned as of 4/93, espousing the Advanced form of
the "Hit the `n' key if you don't like it" Philosophy]. Posts from JPL (Jet
Propulsion Laboratories), as [e-mail] (Dave Hayes).

Compilation copyright (only) [e-mail] (David DeLaney); this
does not claim that individual contributors' copyrights have been transferred,
only that the compilation and original portions thereof are copyright. Please
feel free to distribute freely, charging no-one.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 09-15-94                         Msg # 27176
  To: ALL                              Conf: (2120) news.answers
From: [e-mail]         Stat: Public
Subj: Net.Legends.FAQ (Noticeab        Read: No
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 @SUBJECT:Net.Legends.FAQ (Noticeable Phenomena Of UseNet) Part 2/4
 @PACKOUT:09-15-94
Message-ID: <net-legends-faq/[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.usenet.kooks,alt.answers,news.answers
Organization: Brown Ajah, r.a.sf.w.r-j Division

Archive-name: net-legends-faq/part2
Posting-Frequency: Every 73 days
Last-modified: 9/13/94

Dick Depew (ARMM! ARMM!! ARMM!!!):
 Long-lost twin brother of the intelligent and articulate Ray Depew, who's not
paying me one cent for those adjectives (AFU Official Ex-Executioner: *no*
smileys!). Showed up first in the sci.* hierarchy, later became most common
on news.* . Interestingly enough, as near as I can tell, the original set of
cancels that he did affected exactly *two* posts - both of which had dared to
come from anon.penet.fi in the sci.* hierarchy... much to his surprise,
something of a furor arose over these, which was prolonged unmercifully by
his defense of his actions. Notable chiefly for his long and vocal insistence
that his plan (ARMM) for moderation by forge-cancellation of people's posts
(RetroModeration, or RM), possibly without their permission, is a valid,
necessary, and logical addition to UseNet. Version one malfunctioned when
tested (3/30/93), causing a massive newspost/cancel loop (it was cancelling
its own cancels, as near as I can make out) which caused general hysterical
laughter from those who knew what was going on, as well as the usual
predictions of the imminent death of UseNet (q.v.). Briefly espoused a
"tit-for-two-tats" version. As it turns out, the net is actually threatened in
various manners by several different things (not the least of which is its own
ever-increasing growth), but anonymous postings and/or the accountability
thereof generally are not among the subjects people post "Death of Usenet
predicted" (q.v.) messages about these days...
 Joel Furr (q.v.) newgrouped alt.fan.dick-depew (which is *not* retromoderated
by Dick, despite frequent claims by him to the contrary...). Dick was helpful
in cancelling, for instance, the rec.arts.sf.starwars 16+Megabyte UseNet
"burp", which tied up traffic for half a day in 12/93, and more recently the
mustang.com repost spew on news.groups and alt.config. He has also offered
for public consumption his spam-auto-cancel scripts (talk to him for details)
since the advent of Canter & Siegel...
 Also notable for his theory that off-charter postings are uncivil and
therefore deserve to be "moderated" out of existence. Uses the term
"supersedes" instead of "cancels" to refer to his scheme, generally. Has had
trouble in the past making his plans conform to RFCs -822 and -1036. "Now he
lives off his new-found fame, kibozing the Net for `ARMM' and revelling in
immortality by monumental error." More info is available in the Anonymity On
The Internet FAQ (which, oddly enough, is by a pre-legendary-status L.
Detweiler (q.v.)...). Also the proponent of "Newsgroup Democracy", an
interesting concept he regards as semi-integral to RM (but which others,
sadly,
regard as a separate item - if ND *were* inseparable from RM, objections to
the
latter would be far fewer).
 Had a medium-size heart attack in 1/94, but (against doctor's orders to not
do anything stressful) returned to net.debate soon after; it seems not to have
had adverse effects though, thankfully. Newgrouped alt.retromod in 3/94 after
a
perfunctory proposal (not involving ND) on alt.config and has taken to mostly
posting (and "admonishing" and "rejecting") there. Claims to currently be
figuring out a revolutionary new Message-Id: scheme for HappyNet... and is
gleefully awaiting the return of Canter & Siegel to UseNet...
Contrib. post:
>P.S.  are you considering taking on the task of ARMM archivist?
 No, Dick, I'm not.  I'm actually still of the opinion that you're a
dangerous loon who should be locked up in a small steel box and put in a
room with Tim Pierce.
P.S. ARMM!
--
Posts from [e-mail] (Richard E. Depew).

John Palmer (Another FORGERY!!!; I'm outa here for good and this group is
 toast):
 Has his own alt.fan. group. And his own FAQ (which nobody can apparently
locate at the moment). Associated off and on with Rabbit.Net (currently up);
names his computers after the Thundercats. Perenially in trouble with
Michigan net-routing people for forging map address entries for tygra. Has
his own stable of virtual lawyers, constantly on the go (which can be seen
only by the pure of heart), at least one of whom is named Mr. Stechschulte;
has his own special epithet ("asshole") [note: he uses it about others, not
vice-versa - just to be clear here...]. Is the victim of many, many forged
postings doing nasty things with rmgroups and newgroups, all of which are
shrouded in mysterious circumstances, and all of which were confirmed at first
by other forged postings purporting to be from him. He's never (curiously)
taken advantage of PGP to verify which of these postings are actually from
him...
 His last widely-known exploit resulted in the twilight existence of
alt.tv.tiny-toon.sex, against determined rmgrouping by other admins (who were
chiefly incensed because John's "discussion" seemed to have taken place on an
other-dimensional net)... Currently has reappeared, claiming never to have
left or been "no longer employed by" RabbitNet after all, and started up an
automatic repeated rmgrouping of alt.fan.john-palmer, which in consequence
has gotten a lot *busier* (maybe he should be newgrouping it instead?) Gave
up on that after a while. Is now apparently running an anonymous-remailer
service off tygra which Vitaca Milut (q.v.), among others, is using. Ask
on a.f.j-p about the "Mortimer Bomb"... Newgroups for about six rabbit.*-
hierarchy groups, including rabbit.config and rabbit.q-and-a, showed up in
9/94; questions about RabbitNet probably belong on the latter...
Posts from [e-mail] and @tygra.com, among (many) others.

Bruce Becker:
 Sysadmin reportedly somewhere in Canada who takes many rmgroups for alt.*
that reach his site, forges them (under assumed names) into newgroups for
the same groups, and sends them out again, ensuring the effective
immortality of anything in the alt.* hierarchy. Widely cordially disliked,
and partly responsible (with his imitators) for many of the unused newsgroups
that infest alt.* to this day. His newgroups are recognizable from the
invariable ...!feline!halt!... in their path somewhere. Reported to have been
responsible for the whole series of "Copyright violations" description lines
in the alt.binaries.pictures.* groups... Was absent between October 1993 and
March 1994; no such forged newgroups were reported during that time, except
for one in 1/94 (for alt.binaries.games.vga-planets) which was rather more
clueless than usual Becker forges, and was probably from an imitator...
 GTS.ORG is a site registered to Bruce Becker in Toronto, along with several
others according to rs.internic.net, and visitors to the city have said that
there is a Bruce Becker in the phone book there... is this the real Bruce?
Who knows? Posts, occasionally, a list of the alt newsgroups he considers
to be non-bogus from [e-mail] to alt.config/alt.answers/news.groups/
news.admin.misc/"alt.newgroup". May also be [e-mail]; if anybody knows a
consistent email address for Bruce, let us know...

Laurence Godfrey:
Found on soc.culture.canada and soc.culture.british.
Contrib. post:
 For the uniniated, Laurence Godfrey is a british scientist who worked in
Canada until he quit after a dispute with his boss (he is currently suing
his former employers). Since that time, Godfrey has taken to posting on
soc.culture.canada with insulting comments about Canada and canadians in
general. Needless to say, he has generated a lot of flames.
 A few months back, several people posted comments to the effect that he
was fired from his canadian job. "Libel!" cried Godfrey! Surprisingly, as
of about a week ago (12/93), Godfrey claimed to have won out of court
settlements from the academic institutions that these people attended. In
the last few days, the thread has spiralled out of control - people
doubting his claim (particularly the aspect of suing people in Canada from
a British court) have called him a liar. His response to these people has
been along the lines of: you'd better be careful what you say or: I am
taking the necessary steps to deal with this person - basically implying
that he will take legal action. A popular reply to this has been that
Godfrey is purposely attracting "libelous" flames in order to make a
quick buck.
--
 He vehemently loathes Canada and anything Canadian. Or German. But he's not
racist (he married a Thai [note: Filipino, actually]); he came to hate most
foreigners after a great deal of thought. He also loves suing, and is
perpetually threatening to sue for libel over the net. Look for his posts in
soc.culture.british (or don't), and there was even at least one issue of the
Godfrey Gazette containing some of his more xenophobic comments.
>this might sound like a rather minor net.loon...
 Well, apart from his disturbing ability to capitalize correctly (they're the
most dangerous ones), he does have all the correct attributes.
--
 John Palmer (q.v.) has a stable of virtual lawyers, but this appears to be
looniness of an entirely different order... Has been fairly quiet about the
legal threats since 12/93; claims to have served someone with a High Writ
just before Xmas. But wait -
Contrib. Newsflash:
From "RISKS DIGEST 16.06" (usenet group comp.risks):
> In the first case of its kind in the UK, Canadian academic Dr Laurence
> Godfrey                                 [^^^^^^^^ oh boy, RISKS DIGEST is
                                           about to get sued for libel!!]
> issued a libel writ in London against another academic based in Geneva
> claiming he was defamed by a bulletin board message posted on the Usenet
> system. If the claim succeeds, hosts and users could soon be contemplating
> sizeble pay-outs.
 I'm not wrong, "Phil Hallam-Baker" is the "academic based in Geneva" that
Godfrey has the libel writ against.  Personally, I regard Hallam-Baker
as one of the "single issue" ax-grinders that make Usenet such an inter-
esting place.  He seems to regard DEC (the corporation) and VMS (the
operating system) as some sort of holy things.
--
Posts from [e-mail] (L Godfrey).

David Sternlight:
Contrib. post:
 I second. David is one of the insidious ones, because he can spell and
write. But he's terribly dishonest (or a GREAT troller). Every now and
then, someone will post something saying "I don't always agree with David
[who does?], but his posts always seem to make sense". I suspect they
either don't understand the subject matter, they don't like flames (get
off usenet NOW), or they're just loony lurkers.
--
 David would need to be added based in his lifetime of work, not a single
rant (although I could probably dig one up if I needed). This contrasts
with the Dan Gannon ilk whose every sentence screams "I'M A LOON!".
David has been kind enough to keep from proliferating too far across the
net. He tends to stick to the crypto groups and has what I would call a
sick obsession with other people using pgp (he doesn't like it).
--
 There's David Sternlight, who seems to get his jollies by presenting his
own agenda while ripping up or dismissing out of hand everyone _else's_
positions on topics in comp.org.eff.talk, then getting bent out of shape
when people start slapping him down, so he declares that he's making his
last post to this group, so any snappy comebacks are pointless because he
won't see them -- and then begins posting again within a week. I think
he's up to his third or fourth "I'm leaving this newsgroup forever"
message now, and there was another posting from him this morning in
comp.org.eff.talk.
--
Clearly your counting abilities are not very well; you have lost count ;-).
--
 [He is widely believed on those groups to be working for the government, and
trying to encourage use of the Clipper encryption chip, and to discourage PGP
(because the US govt. can't break it); he is (or was, in 1989) a member of
the gov't's Council on Foreign Relations...]

Pat Townson (UseNet is a cesspool, a dungheap):
 Moderator of comp.dcom.telecom, alias the Telecom Mailing List/Digest
(gatewayed). Known mainly for his commentary added, seemingly at random,
to the ends of posts - that is, up until John Higdon, and others, proposed
another, unmoderated, telecom group, to be called comp.dcom.telecom.tech;
got *way* over-worked-up on this issue. Had a personal vendetta against
Higdon - accused him of owing him thousands of $, wrecking his net.livelihood,
etc. The first vote failed; much of the blame for this was laid at Pat's feet
for allowing only negative commentary (except for one special issue of the
Digest [which {I disrecall} may actually have only appeared *after* the first
vote]) to appear in the group and for sending out a special mailing, to the
list, urging people to vote against the group's creation on rather specious
grounds. Negative votes poured in from list people - but only *after* said
mailing. The vote failed the 2/3-YES test (but not the >100 test).
 The allegations of irregularity finally moved tale (q.v.) to waive the normal
six-month waiting period. The second vote was marked by even *more* of a
flamewar (although not up to the standards of the soc.culture.tibet/
talk.politics.tibet flamewar which had just ended, and of less volume than
the rec.food.veg "discussion") in news.groups, and passed resoundingly;
shortly after, Pat made some final scathing comments in news.groups
(including a threat to start a group sounding remarkably like this present
FAQ) and cut off the gatewaying of the mailing list to UseNet. Has since
restarted the Digest's feed (*possibly* motivated by Joel Furr's (q.v.)
generous offer to take over the moderation of c.d.t); all has been relatively
quiet since 12/93...

Daniel J. Karnes (None of you guys have phased me even for a minute):
 In the same tradition as Fordyce/Kaldis/The Bard; seen periodically on a.p.h,
attempting to ridicule arguments against bigotry and usually winding up
showing how little he knows on the subject. His sig read at one point
"Infinitely inconclusive", which many people think applies to his usual
"arguments" quite well. Has missed, somehow, learning that quantity of posting
does not correlate with quality thereof. One of his aliases may (or may not)
be "Artimus Page", who posts radical-right anti-homosexual tracts from time to
time from a (bogus) address at Yale, claims to have a "cure" for homosexuality
and a clinic at which it's implemented, and who seems to be present only when
Dan is on-net... many people argue against this on the grounds that Dan
couldn't keep from wisecracks long enough to post "Artimus Page"'s tracts
(which isn't true, as Dan *can* write well when he bothers to make the effort
- see below), and that "Artimus" never responded directly to people...
 Netcom knows about Dan, is watching to see if he oversteps himself, and has
had at least one little chat with him about harassment of other netizens...
Also seen on the other gay groups; gets shunned on soc.motss, and leaves
quickly because of it. Apparently in it solely for the attention he gets from
gay people, which makes one wonder severely... Has claimed outright to kiboze,
apparently for his name and/or initials in various forms (which is why certain
groups warn new people "don't say That Name again, please, or he'll show up
and we'll all have to start up our killfiles again"); has also claimed to
rarely call people names. Also seen frequently on ca.earthquakes, where he
reportedly has something of a reputation as well. Has been laughed out of
alt.flame at least once by the master flamers residing there; has been taken
against by "Andrew Beckwith" (q.v.). Once (shortly after his first wife packed
herself up in their brown Ford Taurus station wagon and left him) forged a
post
to news.announce.important asking that anybody who saw her get in touch with
him; I suppose it *was* important to him...
--
Contrib. post:
 Strikingly, no one that I've noticed has nominated Daniel J. Karnes as
a net.butterfly (in the sense of "small thing one wishes were easily
torn apart", perhaps).  Maybe it's because he's been away.  But he's
back.  Here's an extract from one of his recent posts, detailing his
own assessments of his accomplishments last time around...
>Actually, I "accomplished" quite a lot... Thus:
>1) I got two hundred queers to go buy Bibles - and READ them.
>2) I exposed the little "nice guy" facades that you guys put on
>as the bullshit those of us with thinking minds know them to be.
>3) I demonstrated the mental illness rampant in gay circles by
>facilitating situations in which some really sick people dropped
>their guards and demonstrated symptoms of their sickness publicly.
>4) I exposed dozens of pedophilic gays for what they were by their
>own admissions.
>5) I thoroughly enjoyed myself. :)
--
>>Artimus Page is always good for a laugh. He claims to have a `cure'
>>for homosexuality.
>Artimus Page is Dan Karnes under a very thin disguise... therefore he's
>already got.
 This was widely claimed, but never decisively proved, as far as I
know. The Path lines weren't even similar. I think Artimus deserves
(?) separate mention, maybe in the Karnes section.  Artimus definitely
had a very different rant from the typical Karnes style; Artimus also
never responded directly to anyone, as Karnes did all the time (albeit
incredibly ineffectually).
--
 For what it's worth, every Artimus Page article that anyone
bothered to track down was forged from the same
out-of-the-way terminal server from which DJK has been seen to log in.
--
Does Dan's entry include his rather, err, uh, unusual theories about
earthquakes? He believes that earthquakes "like" to happen at 4:34 a.m.
--
 Danny has taken against this FAQ entry for some reason, and has threatened to
borrow John Palmer's virtual lawyers, saying it's "slanderous" (hint: look
up slander sometime) and defames his reputation, without actually ever giving
any details to ye olde FAQ-writer on *why* he thinks this or what exactly he
doesn't like, and going so far as to bother yoF-w's sysadmins and Department
Heads and Deans (sheesh!) about it; his version of what it ought to read like
is as follows (note that this by itself doesn't really tell one why he's
widely known on UseNet, or most of the interesting details):
-----begin Karnes-----
 The problem I have with my entry in this "FAQ" is that most of it is simply
just not true, and the rest is nothing but propaganda from the net.queer
element that reeks up certain parts of USENET.  Reading this, I find that
almost all of it conforms nicely to the "model" that net.queers try to paste
on anyone that opposes them, but very little of it is based on fact. (quite
typical of homosexuals)
 Please remove my entry from your FAQ - or allow it to be revised so that
more TRUTH is presented.
Like this:
------------------------------------
Daniel J. Karnes
  Or "djk" as he is known on computer systems around the world has been
a part of the internet since it's early days. At first, he was confined
to posting to "relative" newsgroups and sending private email through
a numbered account in a large corporate machine. Djk found true freedom
when he was one of the first users on one of the first commercial public
access UNIX systems when the internet was opened up to non-governmental
or academic users in the early 1990's.
  Djk works in the telecommunications industry as an engineer and manager,
and possesses a rare blend of hardware and software skills that make him
a technical power to be reckoned with.
  Early in his net.carreer, djk noticed a strong homosexual element present
on the net, and being a member of a very large Traditional Values group,
decided to watch them closely. It did not take much time for djk to become
outraged by the activities of net.queers who seemed to think that the net
was their own private playground. Djk began his very controversial postings
to the gay groups as an effort to undermine the efforts of net.queers who
were operating with gang-like organization against anyone who opposed them.
Djk can stand firm against hundreds of opponents and his name strikes fear
into the hearts of most homosexuals on the net.
  djk posts as [e-mail] and operates TASP.NET as a private access UNIX
system from his home.
------------------------------------
There! Now THAT is more accurate!
-djk
-----end Karnes-----
 I might add that, contrary to his usual one-liner posting style, Dan *can*
compose long rational pieces of prose like the above, given time, but
apparently does not think it worth the effort to do so in almost all of his
UseNet posts. A minifaq is also available with some interesting Dan posts
and email, to/from myself and sysadmins. In 5/93, came in 13th in the "most
evil net.personalities" vote on alt.evil .
Posts as djk@(TASP.uucp.)netcom.com (email: [e-mail]) (Daniel J.
 Karnes).

Not all of the net.legends are people - or even human. Therefore, viola (tm):
3.0  ------------------------------------ Stupid Net Tricks:
Dave Rhodes and MAKE.MONEY.FAST:
 In every Paradise there is at least one fatal flaw. In every mail system,
there is sooner or later a chain letter. UseNet, luckily, seems to have
been adopted by only one such - but it pops up in more places and faster
than kudzu, and is about as hard to kill completely. Actually, nobody
currently knows much about Dave Rhodes (but see below) - except that he
wrote the template for the first MAKE.MONEY.FAST pyramid scheme. His
name and address have long since fallen off the top of any of the current
copies... There is something of a miniFAQ available on this post.
 Advice to new netters panting to try it out and make $50,000 in an afternoon:
I can tell you right now what you're gonna get - an extremely full emailbox,
a ticked-off sysadmin (because your emailbox is full of letter bombs from
irate UseNetters who snapped at seeing this cr*p in their newsgroups for
the fifth time in two weeks, and because several thousand *un*snapped-as-yet
UseNetters email her directly saying "Talk to this kid; it's illegal, a waste
of time, and annoying), and a rapidly-vanishing UseNet access (wave bye-bye
to it for a looooong time, if you're not lucky...). The letter itself says
it's legal, you say? It's lying; it's known as a Ponzi or pyramid scheme, and
is wire fraud for *sending* the letter, *and* postal fraud for receiving any
of the money thru the U.S. Mail (can you say Federal Case, boys'n'girls?)...
 And you *have* to leave a trail directly to yourself, name and address - or
else it *can't* work (hee hee)... Save yourself the grief: just say NO to
Dave.Rhodes . Recently voted number one on list of people *every* UseNetter
would like to see die an excruciatingly slow and painful death. If we're
lucky, it does not get posted at all (for a day or two).
Contrib. post:
 Dave Rhodes was a student at Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, MD.
This is a Seventh Day Adventist college. The posting machine was !cucstud,
aka Columbia Union College, Student. It passed news upstream to uunet.
Cucstud was a 3B2, and there were two or three more. Note this predated
the widespread usage of the pseudodomain of { }.UUCP, and I don't recall
if the site was ever so named.
 Needless to say, Leroy Cain, the sysadm, was not amused. This posting was
made in 1987-1988, sometime just after the infamous jj@portal one, and
his incoming mail queue was impressive.
 I do not know if Leroy took the matter to the Dean of Students, but do
know he posted an apology, and ensured that Dave would not be doing that
again, at least at THAT site.
 As for why I had an account on cucstud, and knew Leroy, when my only
connection was that I caught a bus to work in front of the place every
morning; that's a different story........
--
 I like what Dogbert had to say about chain letters:
 "Don't you think that for your first crime you shouldn't attach your name and

address and mail it to several thousand strangers?"
--
[Evidence has since turned up that the Dave Rhodes letter has been
circulating,
in snail-mail form, long before that fateful day in 1987 or 1988... ah
well...]

Alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb:
 Alt.* ... is a sewer. Thanks to Bruce Becker (q.v.) and others like him,
there are literally thousands of odd, little-known, poorly-propagated alt.*
groups, many or most newgrouped as a whim of someone's. The canonical first
on the list in this category (and the most widely (?) respected) is
alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork (newgrouped by Jeff Vogel, with
Distribution: mudd and surprising-to-him results), for speaking in Mock
Swedish and discussing chickee recipees. This spawned, thru the intervention
of Shub-Internet (q.v.), alt.tv.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die,
alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die, sci.edward.teller.boom.boom.boom,
alt.lawyers.sue.sue.sue, alt.minsky.meme.meme.meme,
alt.music.enya.puke.puke.puke (and of course the infamous
alt.music.enya.puke.puke.pukeSender:, missing <return> and all) as well as
alt.ted.frank.troll.troll.troll ... all of which are effectively immortal.
 INN apparently now has a "kill-the-chefs" option which sends newsgroups of
the
form alt.foo.bar.baz.baz.baz to the bitbucket... Also infamous: .cabal, from
approximately mid-'93, which broke news software far and wide (due to no-one
having imagined anyone would create a newsgroup starting with "."...), and is
*still* causing problems among some xrn users... The moral of the story?
First:
read *all* the newsgroup description lines. Then: read the alt.config FAQ.
Only
after *that* should you even *think* of discussing a new alt.* group (on
alt.config, of course).

"Can you take a moment to fill out this survey?"/"Do my homework for me,
  mister man?"/"Please email me, as I don't read this group":
 This sort of stuff recurs quite frequently, and is usually a result of low
familiarity with UseNet. Try not to do it yourself. Surveys actually do
have a place - but not the ones that seem to think they're doing you a
favor by letting you contribute to their Important Research... "Please
email me, as I *can't* read this group", on the other hand, is quite
acceptable, as is "Please email me; I'll post a summary of the responses".
Thinly-disguised attempts to get others to do your research paper or algebra
homework are Right Out, thanks.

"Will you icky queers kindly take your pictures/GIFs/discussions/proposals
  OUT of our nice shiny clean newsgroup!":
 Sigh. There will always be people who have *no* idea that ideas different
from theirs exist - until they get to UseNet, where *anyone* can speak up
at *any* time. Quote: "It's UseNet, get used to it." Prevalent on the
erotica and sex groups; usually seen proposing that the group be *split*
into sections - what a *marvelous* idea - why hasn't *anyone* ever thought
of it before? Tend to leave quickly, under the dark cloud produced by the
flames. Canonical recent example: stx1606 (q.v.).

Clueless newbies:
 Everyone has been a newcomer at one point or another. Thus the term
"newbie". It's not derogatory, and it's an easily-curable condition - for
most people. The rest tend to become known as "clueless newbies". The
only known treatment for such is repeated force-feeding of clues.
Sometimes even this doesn't work... If someone *does* give you advice on
the net, it *never* hurts to think about it for a second, nor does it ever
hurt to think before following up to a post. Canonical example: the
alt.christnet (q.v.) fiasco. And remember, all you newbie-flamers out there -
you too once knew nothing whatsoever about this mysterious thing called
UseNet.

Death of UseNet/Internet predicted:
 People panic easily, it seems; any time there's a new development leading
to expansion of the net, someone's sure to bring up its humble origins and
the fact that it was never designed in the first place to be *anything* like
what it's grown into today. This invariably leads to someone else predicting
"imminent death of UseNet; film/GIFs/JPEGs/animated ASCII art/SIRDS/
Claymation/etc. at 11" (old news joke; Brad Templeton (q.v.) claims the
original
formulation of "Imminent death of the net predicted" - I don't know who first
added "<medium> at 11"...). Basically, it's gonna take a *lot* of shit to
break
the net, as it is today (even Dick Depew (q.v.) didn't manage it (yet...)),
although it can be staggered some, or slowed down for a bit... meanwhile, it
keeps right on growing, and the next crisis is always Just Around the Corner
(tm). The net *was*, after all, designed to keep functioning after an all-out
nuclear war... and though some of the flamefests have approached this level,
none have quite managed to destroy it yet.
 Anyway, "Imminent Death of the Net predicted, <medium> at 11" is a
long-running net.joke, applicable to Internet as well as Usenet, and is in
fact the unofficial Motto of news.admin.misc (where the net.crises are
posted about and debated endlessly - until the next net.crisis shoves them
aside).

.sig viruses:
 First there were .sigs; next, the Warlord (q.v.); then came .sig viruses.
The simplest (and probably first) was "Hi, I'm a .sig virus; copy me into
yours and join the fun!". This, rather predictably, mutated into dozens of
non-compatible versions; most .sigs can only hold one or so (Kibo's is, as
usual, an exception; a 1000-plus-line .sig has room for *everything*!).
 A particularly strange turn was taken on a.f.u in late 1993, when Vicki
Robinson, relative newbie, innocently proclaimed "But I'm not in anyone's
.sig". A.f.u being what it is, this appeared in someone else's .sig almost
immediately, (Jason R. Heimbaugh claims this distinction, and is keeping
both the .sig collection and the FAQ) and quickly spread to cover nearly
the entire a.f.u community of posters; it has been sighted as far away as
news.* . There is a Vicki Robinson sig-virus FAQ; refer to it for more
details on chronology, varieties (this .sig virus mutates MUCH faster than
normal), etc. Vicki's own .sig now contains mentions of her .sig virus in
other people's .sigs (a meta-virus)... "welcome to afu. Here's your
accordion" sums it up best, I guess. A Vicki virus in your .sig is not
*required* for a.f.u posters (indeed, Joel Furr (q.v.) has denounced the
practice, saying essentially "get a life"... and has ended up in Vicki's .sig,
and others, as a result)... but viruses *are* contagious. Has somewhat
revived,
in multiple varieties, not all of which are Vicki anymore, in late summer '94.

Alt.religion.kibology:
 Possibly one of the strangest places on Usenet. Home to the worship of and/or
scorn for Kibo (q.v.); impossible to crosspost inappropriately to, much like
misc.misc . Home also to a constantly-changing cast of "regular" Kibologists,
currently including several people already mentioned in this FAQ (Kibo, by
definition, plus John_-_Winston, Ludwig Plutonium, and Andrew Bulhak, and
everyone mentioned in the xibo entry), as well as such luminaries as Craig
Dickson, Lewis (YDNCTFL YWSRCFAOTW) McCarthy (not to be confused with Lewis
Stiller), Rose Marie Holt, brent jackson, and Jay Paul Chawla, plus a couple
anti-kibologists (Jason V Robertson is filling this role at the moment, with
R Bryner being an anti-k 'bot). Filled with trolls, beabling, "You misspelled
Ann Rand", odd followup-to lines, posts from Kibo, and a proselytary attitude;
inadvertent arch-enemy newsgroup of rec.org.mensa . If you see it in the
headers while reading another newsgroup, you may want to take a deep breath
before pushing 'f'. Stick around long enough here and you'll be crossposted
almost everywhere else on UseNet... which leads us neatly into

Crossposted to *.test:
 A variation on "crossposted to alt.hell and back"; see Gannon, Argic,
etc. A news.admin.misc post suggested that this practice (which gives
unsuspecting followers-up a deluge of autoreplies from the daemons scanning
the *.test groups worldwide) originated with Carasso (q.v.) in the late 80s;
further data I've gathered indicates, however, that it well predates him, and
that he simply widely popularized and practiced it... Moral: *Always* check
your Newsgroups: and Followup-to: lines...

And the sequel, "Posted separately to every newsgroup you can find":
 No, you're not the first person to think of it. Unfortunately, you
won't be the last, either. As the net grows, and the number of new users
grows, however, each incidence of this is a little worse than the last;
at the moment we have in net.memory Skinny Dip Thigh Cream (posted by someone
who set his email-forward to the [widely known] address of one of the
developers
of Mosaic, but got kicked off his account *very* fast anyway because he didn't
have the access to set his site's postmaster@ address' forwarding too),
Laurence Canter and his law firm^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hwife Siegel [Green Cards and
Spam! I do not like it, Sam I Am!] (who have been kicked off *four* separate
services for mass postings of a misleading "Green Card" ad) and Clarence
Thomas
IV, who mass-posted a two-page note about the end of the world ("JESUS IS
COMING SOON") soon after the California quake from a Seventh-Day Adventist
college somewhere. Joel Furr (q.v.), incidentally, has released a Canter &
Siegel T-shirt, and in return has been threatened with various lawsuits by
the distaff portion of that lovely pair...
 "Cross-posted to 2000 different newsgroups" has also been thought of;
this will quite probably break people's newsreaders all over the place
due to line length considerations. Either of these is about the only
thing that's not actually illegal that you can easily do which will
piss off your admins *and* the net worse than posting Make.Money.Fast (q.v.);
don't even think about going down in net.history like this, kids. Can you
say "25,000 pieces of email in your mailbx"? Can you say "Kicked off your
account faster than you can spell [e-mail]"? I knew you could...

Hitler, Nazis, nazis, and net.cops:
 Warning: now that this FAQ has mentioned Hitler and Nazis, UseNet Rule #4
(also known as Godwin's Rule, after Mike Godwin of the EFF, sci.crypt, and
comp.org.eff.talk, a sometime foe of David Sternlight (q.v.) [even though it
was apparently in use, by Richard Sexton {q.v.} among others, before Mike's
1988 (?) net.advent; the "Godwin's" part seems to stem from "Rich Rosen's
Rules of Net.Debate, which I don't have a copy of]) says it will be coming to
an irrelevant and off-topic end soon. Just as there will always be newbies
("It's *always* September, *somewhere* on the net" - response to a 1993 wave
of delphi.com postings on a.f.u), there will always be people who see the net
and are repulsed because there's stuff there they don't want to see - so they
set out to make sure noone else can, either. They invariably fail, because
there are no net.cops to enforce any such rules on UseNet; in the course of
the heated flamewar that usually follows, things escalate until either Hitler
or Nazis (or both) put in an appearance, at which point the thread has
officially lost all relevance. People scream at each other a bit more, then
give up and go home. Bleah. "Keep your brains up top; don't be a net.cop."
 This has mutated, in true UseNet fashion, to encompass *any* continuing
thread; if you mention Hitler or Nazis out of the blue, the thread is sure to
die irrelevantly soon (and, incidentally, you've lost the argument, whatever
it was)... and every continuing thread on UseNet *must* contain such a
reference sooner or later. Invoking Rule #4 deliberately in hopes of ending
a thread, however, is doomed to failure (Quirk's Exception)...

UseNet Rules #n:
 No firm info at the present time is available on just what the other UseNet
Rules #n are. However, at a guess, they include:
--
Rule #nonumber: There are no hard-and-fast Rules on UseNet, only Guidelines,
 which are more or less strictly enforced (and differ) from group to group;
 this is why it's generally wise to read any group for a bit before ever
 posting to it.
Rule #0: *There* *is* *no* *C*b*l*. There *is*, however, a net-wide
 conspiracy designed solely to lead Dave Hayes (q.v.) to believe that there
 is a C*b*l.
 Corollary: *There* *are* *no* *pods*.
Rule #9: It's *always* September, *somewhere* on the Net.
 Dave Fischer's Extension: 1993 was The Year September Never Ended [so far,
 there doesn't seem to be much evidence he's wrong...]
Rule #17: Go not to UseNet for counsel, for they will say both `No' and
 `Yes' and `Try another newsgroup'.
Rule #2 (John Gilmore): "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes
 around it."
Rule #108 (from the soc.motss FAQ): "What will happen to me if I read
 soc.motss?" "In general, nothing. (You may be informed or infuriated, of
 course; but that's a standard Usenet hazard.)"
Rule #666: Old alt groups never die. They don't fade away nicely, either.
Rule #7-B: There is no topic so thoroughly covered that noone will ever
 bring it up again.
Rule #90120: Applying your standards to someone else's post *will* result
 in a flamewar.
Rule #1: Spellling and grammer counts. So do grace, wit, and a sense of
 humor (the latter two are different), as well as a willingness to meet
 odd people, but these are lesser considerations.
Rule #x^2: FAQs are asked frequently. Get used to them.
Rule #29: no rational discourse can happen in a thread cross-posted to
 more than two newsgroups.
rule #6 (Eddie Saxe): don't post to misc.test unless you understand the
 consequences.
Rule #547 (Arne Adolfsen): When people know they're wrong they resort to ad
 hominems.
Rule #37 (Faisal Nameer Jawdat): Read the thread from the beginning, or else.
Rule #5 (Reimer's Reason): Nobody ever ignores what they should ignore on
 Usenet.
Rule $19.99 (Brad `Squid' Shapcott): The Internet *isn't* *free*.  It just has
 an economy that makes no sense to capitalism.
Rule #3 ("Why 3?" "Because we felt like it"): For every opinion there is at
 least one equally loud and opposing opinion; sometimes stated as:
Rule #27 (Gary Lewandowski): "In cyberspace, *everyone* can hear you scream."
And for completeness' sake:
Rule #4: (Godwin's Rule) Any off-topic mention of Hitler or Nazis will cause
 the thread it is mentioned in to an irrelevant and off-topic end very soon;
 every thread on UseNet has a constantly-increasing probability to contain
 such a mention.
 Quirk's Exception: Intentional invocation of this so-called "Nazi Clause" is
  ineffectual.
 Case's Corollary: If the subject is Heinlein or homosexuality, the
  probability of a Hitler/Nazi comparison being made becomes equal to one.

`Rap is not music' (and other Permanent Floating Flamewars):
Contrib. post:
 In the list of non-human net.legends, I think the `Rap is not music'
meta-thread deserves a mention. This turns up every month or two in
some music group, and is distinguished by being even more predictable
than the average recurring net.thread. It's become a crowd
participation event to chant along with the newbie following the
script until he gets to the point where he (never seen a woman do it)
volunteers to write a rap 'cos its so easy and disapears in a puff of
embarassment.
--
>Let's see...off the top of my head, not looking in the archives...
>There's the "how do I remove a file named '-' from comp.unix.wizards...
>( at least a year so far..)
>The " 'move' is less intuitive than 'copy-and-delete' thread from this
>humble newgroup [alt.folklore.computers] ( 3 or 4 months, and still kicking!
>Hi, Mike [Dahmus]!).
>The "Furrymuck is for lameoid perverts" thread that Joel Furr keeps
>firing back up on alt.fan.furry...
>And let's not forget the "Imminent Death of the Net" theme, which has echoed
>at least since the first FidoNet gateway...(or was it Compu$erve?)
 Those are all recurring, not long-running.
>Do the cyclical "september threads" count as continuous?
 It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September
that never ended.
--
 Foob's Law states that the quickest way to completely derail any netnews
discussion is to bring up gun control, and so I guess we're on our way to
Outer Space now.
--
 Note that almost every newsgroup will have a Flamewar that Will Not Die (or
two, or six) lurking somewhere in the background - but that these flamewars
are usually pretty well confined to the one newsgroup simply through
specialization, so I'm not gonna even try to include most of them here...
however, there are several that pop up almost at will *anywhere* in UseNet,
among which are the abortion flamewars, the homosexuality flamewars, the
"My computer's better than yours" flamewars, the freedom-of-speech/UseNet-
is-international flamewar, the Permanent Floating Flamewar that followed
Serdar Argic wherever he oozed, the drug wars (for various drugs), the male/
female circumcision wars, and the Christianity-spreading-people vs.
"enlightened intellectuals" flamewar(s)... there's something about many of
these
subjects that seems to attract the worst in people (that's partly why this FAQ
seems to concentrate somewhat on anti-gay posters, for instance - there's so
*many* of them that have this little "hot button" that there's more kooks
amongst them...). Scan down the subjects in talk.* for a more complete
listing,
and note that Emily Postnews has a FAQ on the predictable "I want my groooop!"
script for alt.config ...

"Oooo, *he's* Famous! What's his email address???":
 There are many people on the net who are Famous in Real Life tm; however,
usually the requirements of being Famous preclude their spending all their
time on the net corresponding by email with Fans. Some have newsgroups where
they hang out (Douglas Adams and Mike Jittlov have their own alt.fan groups,
for instance, as do Dave Barry and Terry Pratchett, and they show up there or
lurk with varying degrees of consistency); others are on an online service or
just lurk in certain places. Generally, though, you'll do better writing to
their editor or publisher or agent if you really really want an autograph or a
piece of their clothing... William Gibson (of Neuromancer fame) is *not* on
the
net (he still reportedly uses a manual typewriter), so don't ask. Asking "Gee,
how can I get [famous author]'s email address? Pretty pleeeeeze?" on
rec.arts.sf.* is likely to get you semi-toastily flamed as well.
 This may be slowly changing however... more companies/organizations are
discovering that the net's a good place to get feedback or opinions, or
to get volunteers (or even employees), and some (like Wizards of the Coast
on rec.games.deckmaster) have a quite extensive net.presence, looking for
reactions and/or helping people. But in general, creative-type famous people
must spend much of their time creating, not wasting time on UseNet...

4.0  ______________________________________________
 Lesser Lights (Honorable Mention): not all of these are loons (many are quite
sane), but all are notable in more than one group to some degree, or notorious
in one group. There are *far* too many odd people on the net to mention all of
them, or even a fraction thereof; these are some of the ones that have stuck
in
*other* peoples' minds as ... distinctive.

"Red-Headed Goddess":
Contrib. post:
 I still want to nominate at least in lesser Loon status the
"Red-Headed Goddess" that I saw on a.a.v and occasionally on sci.skeptic.
Doesn't anyone but me remember her? She was able to post the most
absolutely LOVELY gems of New-Age crossed with 1920's space-opera physics
which she used to combat spoilsports like me who might inquire as to how
intelligent life could exist on Venus. Her retorts were works of art,
saddened by our unenlightened state, filled with "different vibrational
states in the ether" and other buzzwords of poetic yet senseless nature.
--
*May* be Kathy, [e-mail] (Redheaded Goddess), sighted recently
on talk.religion.newage; may not be. Waiting for further (dis)confirmation.

Steven Fordyce (Deer are for dinner) and his ilk:
 Dedicated to proving that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry,
because marriage is based solely on the possibility of reproduction and
the needs of the government. He and several others like him fight a
losing battle daily in alt.politics.homosexuality and alt.(fan.)rush-limbaugh,
usually simultaneously (UseNet makes strange bed-fellows...). Is currently
several thousand points behind solely on style and grace, not even mentioning
logic; is seemingly not capable of altering his worldview. Has admitted he did
not marry his wife for love, and doesn't seem to understand *why* this spurs
his debating opponents on... Posts from [e-mail] (Steven R Fordyce).

Ted Kaldis (I can't understand why anyone should think I'm a "gay-basher"):
Contrib. post:
 "Christian" homophobe.  Most famous for the "tire iron incident", in
which he lent his tire iron to some friends so that they could use it
to bash some men at a gay bar.  He bragged about this in alt.flame,
then subsequently claimed he had had no idea what was going on.
Supposedly nothing came of the incident; the police turned up or something.
Believes that nobody outside the USA may comment on anything to do
with the USA.  Particularly hates Canadians who have the temerity to
comment on US issues.
 Sexist, racist and misogynist to boot.  Posted an article which listed
(mostly obscene) slang terms for Asian women, and seemed surprised when he
got flamed for it.  Seems woefully unaware of his own reputation.
Choice quotes:
- - - cut here - - -
[e-mail] (C J Silverio) writes:
> [...] With a name like Valerie or Sally or Trixie, a woman on the net
> is in for it.
"Trixie" is a name for a female dog.  (The four-legged variety.)
> [...]  You get Ted Kaldis responding to your posts with heavy-footed
> witticism about "feminine logic being an oxymoron."  [...]
Darling, you're just wound a little too tight.  And I know exactly
what'll loosen you up.
- - - cut here - - -
- - - cut here - - -
[e-mail] (Clayton Cramer) writes:
> I've seen ads in the Sonoma State Star (SSU's student newspaper), that
> specified that a gay employee was required for a graphics advertising
> position with one of the gay resorts on the Russian River.
 Well they shouldn't have any trouble finding one!  I worked in the ad
industry for over a decade, and I can tell you for a fact that homo's
seem to proliferate that industry.  My best explanation is that they
live in a fantasy world anyway (pretending that aberrant behavior is
normal) and because of this they are drawn to a profession where an
active imagination takes precedence over practical reality.
- - - cut here - - -
"If a man has sex with men, he's a homosexual -- and by definition is
 exhibiting a hate for humanity; if he carves them up afterwards, he is
 a homosexual who carries out his hate for humanity to the ultimate
 degree. [...] It is only to the depraved that the act of buggery
 represents an expression of affection."
"Lesbian: a poorly-socialized female who is unable to enter into or
 maintain a relationship with a man, and who thus resorts to engaging
 in perverse sexual acts with other females."
"I have the necessary qualifications to speak on behalf of Jesus."
"That's easy.  This is yet another example of feminine "logic" (truly
 an oxymoron if ever there was one)."
"These kinds of remarks are wholly inappropriate and are the mark of a bigot."
"I can't understand why anyone should think I'm a "gay-basher"."
> I am surprised (and probably shouldn't be) that Ted Kaldis is still around.
No you shouldn't.
> Did he ever get his tire iron back?
No.  I had to go to the junkyard and pay a buck to get another one.
--
Actually lucid for posts at a time, which puts him in the Sternlight category.
--
 He, of course, euphemistically referred to [the tire-iron incident] as
"scaring some homosexuals".
 T*d once titled a post "SHUT UP CANADIAN AGITATOR!" for no good reason on
(get this) soc.culture.canada.
 You're [also] forgetting his exceedingly pedantic harping about spelling
mistakes, his claims he would vacation in Colorado because of the passing of
Proposition 2 and his claims that he would move to Louisiana because they
passed stringent anti-abortion laws.
--
 And his proud boast that he was moving to California to get a 6-figure
salary.  Never happened, what a surprise.
 And the time he bragged about his programming expertise, and proved it
by producing a version of bubble sort which he had coded in uncommented
8086 assembler "for maximum speed and efficiency".
--
Posts as kaldis@{remus|romulus}.rutgers.edu (Theodore A. Kaldis).

Mikhail Zeleny (That goes completely against the categorical imperative!):
 Russian philosopher wanna-be; *his* objection to homosexuality (yes, I know
I have about six in a row here, but *honestly*, it's one of the big nut-
subjects, no pun intended, on the Net...) seems to be purely abstract: he
can't imagine Kant (I think) approving of it, thinks it rules out
reproduction,
and so tries to show that it's metaphysically bankrupt. Seen on several
different groups; try soc.culture.soviet, but mind the Zumabot ...
Contrib. post:
 Michael Zeleny pops up all over the place. His kink is to post
unbelievably long messages full of philosophical verbage which
generally boil down to no content. His only `interesting' opinion is
that homosexuality is immoral because it (in some way he can't define)
precludes reproduction. Maybe he thinks the net will need more newbies
in 18 years time.
--
 "No content" is a little strong, but it is clear that he's arguing
for the sheer love of long pointless arguments.  The last time
I saw him drift into a real group, the first followup (from
someone himself prone to long, relatively opaque and pedantic posts)
was started with a warning that most people in the group should
probably just ignore him and save the grief.
 Cameron Laird's beautiful summary of a few USEnet groups mentioned him:
>>I think of it as a party held in very very large house.  In one room people
>>are drinking espresso and discussing translations of Rilke, while in another
>>they're sucking nitrous out of a garbage bag and setting fire to a couch.
>rec.arts.books:  drinking espresso, and watching
>     M. Zeleny burn translations of Rilke.
>misc.woodworking:  should we burn the couch-maker,
>     because he used electricity?
>soc.history:  eat the garbage bag, inject nitrous
>     into anyone who looks like Rilke, and, anyway,
>     couches and espresso are glorious Turkish
>     inventions.
>news.groups:  no one should be permitted to say
>     "garbage bag", "fire", or "couch", because
>     newsgroups for those purposes already exist--
>     and even if they don't, it was a democratic
>     decision.
--
 I think it would be fun to include an example of Zeleny's attempts at
humor.  Seeing Zeleny try to tell a joke is like watching Miss Manners try
to limbo; you know it is not going to be done well, but it is amusing to
see it attempted.  There was a really good one on rec.arts.books about a
week and a half ago; too bad I didn't archive it.
 Shall we start an Urban Legend saying that Zeleny is the same guy as
"Fans-to-blow-toxic-waste-into-Latvia" Zhirinovsky?  Or maybe he's the
lost Russian twin of Dieter on the SNL "Shprockets" skits?  ("The
categorical imperative does not allow negative statements.  So you see
your attempts at humor are futile.")
--
 Zeleny will do anything for posterity.  For some articles he wrote last
October in a.p.h, he put the expiration date to be Dec 31, 1999.
--
Posts as [e-mail] (Mikhail Zeleny).

magoo/Gary Landers|Warren (The Great Gary L.)/The Bard, and other
prepubescents
 everywhere:
 Generally all following the same pattern: flame and run away, or flame and
stick around and never reply very sensibly to anything... A hazard of
day-to-day
lurking/posting on the gay or bi groups, or alt.flame - there's many more,
like Chuck Whealton, but I think I'm gonna stop with The Bard, because the
examples (like the posters) just get repetitive... The particular
multi-handled
person mentioned above seems to grow a new "handle" after each retreat...
Contrib. post:
 Oh, he made an entrance here, I think it was during late summer, with stories
focusing on young gay men, transvestites and orgies, where he made claims that
"there was nothing so shocking as seeing another naked man." Every character
except for the protagonist was portrayed as fucked up. The language was...
passable.
 The first ones were fascinating to read; after that it became like watching
the same carcrash over and over. The funny thing is that he doesn't dehumanize
gay sexuality, but just sees us (oh crime) as `unamnly'. He then proceeded to
define that in wonderfully circular defenitions, manly == having women ==
manly
== etc. He seemed to be beyond reason or empathy.
 Furthermore, there is this subplot somewhere of a gay brother of his who
died,
and I think we are seeing guilt for ostracization of him somewhere. (By the
way, don't ever get caught doing dishes, cooking or other household chores as
a
male person. He brands you `unmanly' for it).
 Wait, wait, wait, there's more, yeah: he saw being gay as taking the easy way
out. You know, can't make it with a woman, so you turn to a a man. And
lesbians
don't exist, in his worldview. He never mentions them.
 By the end of it, he claimed to be here just for the flaming and having fun
with the reactions, he really didn't mean it like that, he just wanted some
attention and then proceeded to give a name by name account of people who
responded to him and that he thought they were cool and brave fighters.
 Again, another person who thinks it's ok to just take queers as objects to
flame for fun. Makes you wonder why they never go over to soc.culture.jewish
or
soc.culture.african-american or something. They could have heaps more fun
there.
 So, is that recap enough, or do you want more?
--
 'The Great Gary L.' is Gary Landers, who over summer 1993 terrorized
alt.politics.homosexuality with his unbelievably crap posts on how to
stop being homosexual.
 He also posted a lot of spoof fictional tales, as I recall.
 In September 1993 he posted that, owing to requests in a.p.h., he was
going to spend a weekend 'being gay' and rattled off his own list of what
exactly being gay meant to him. Strangely, when the time came to report
the results, he was silent.
 Eventually (this must have been early October) he had so pissed
everyone off that he must have been in most people's killfiles. In
response to someone politely inviting him to leave he gave a hostage to
fortune by saying he was well liked on a.p.h. and called a net.vote to
determine whether he stayed or went.
 He lost by at least 10 posts to 0. The low number of posts asking him
to leave was probably due to his ubiquitous killfile presence. Though he
said he had actually won the vote, he did indeed go shortly after.
--
[He didn't stay away very long, but re-appeared as The Bard...] The Bard
posted from [e-mail], now from [e-mail], and
has confirmed being Gary; Gary Landers posted from [e-mail],
and magoo from [e-mail] (Magoo) (magoo also has confirmed being The
Great Gary L.). (7/94) Gary Warren, [e-mail] has just appeared,
signing his posts "The Wonderful Bard"...

Keith Cochran ("Justified and Ancient"):
 A counterpart to the above several. On the seek-out-the-fundies-and-dissect-
their-arguments-gleefully-with-flaming side; tends to bring abortion and/or
gay
rights into threads he's in. Likes to snipe at the alt.christnet (later
christnet.*) groups (but had to cut back dramatically since Holonet started
filtering them), and likes to crosspost to them, to talk.abortion or
alt.abortion.inequity, to talk.religion.misc, and/or sometimes to talk.origins
or alt.atheism (keeping things stirred up on all of them...). Also to
nyx.misc,
when the subject mutates to Colorado's Amendment #2, apparently partially
accounting for its inflated percentages in the Arbitron ratings. Associate
Professor of Religious Studies and Chair, University Sexual Discrimination
Committee, for the University of Ediacara. Known in talk.abortion for
discussing "aberrant sexual practices" (by their standards, anyway) and for
being the unfortunate person Peter Nyikos decided to use to tell the world
about his hemorrhoid problems. Keeper of the comp.databases.xbase.fox FAQ's,
which says something. We're not sure what, but it says something. Posts as
[e-mail] (Keith "Justified And Ancient" Cochran).

xibo (You're allowed. NOT!      --X.):
 Kibo imitator. Title currently held by Sean "Xibo" Coates; apparently, "back
when Kibo was [e-mail] it was even a semi-rotating title". Not
Allowed;
one former holder of the title seems to have taken this seriously enough never
to have posted. Apparently Head Wizard at (EVIL!)Mud. Further deponent knoweth
not. Variations also existent: Scott "~ibo" Ramming, Jeremy "OS/2ibo" Reimer,
Rich "mcmxciibo" Holmes (q.v.), Andrew "znribo" (varying pronunciations) Hime
(who reposts interesting-to-him stuff in alt.cosuard, which recently was
invaded by what seems to be the alt.1d crowd, finally fed up at all the test
posts there [which was, after all, the raison d'etre of alt.1d: getting the
test posts off of alt.3d ...]; they've since moved on), Anthony "SCHWAibo"
Hobbs, Magnus "!kibo" Y Alvestad, Bill Marcum "beableibo" (although Andrew
Bulhak claims to be the Beableibo), Headless "James `Kibo' Parry" Chicken,
Lewis "McKibo" McCarthy, Craig "*ibo" Dickson, Joe "Hibo" George,
d"d'ibo"kirchner, Defender of the ".ibo" Faith (ingram), Patrick ".*ibo",
"kibof" Schaaf, Brian char _[]="\x69bo"; Chase, Rose Marie "AAAAEEEEIIIIbo"
Holt, Jacob C "\nibo" Kesinger, Austin "Zibo" Loomis, possibly Rachel J.
"asciibo" Perkins (opinions are divided). Also, very subtly, playing off
Kibo's
font fondness, 5150. Craig "*ibo" has the title to the -ibo namespace, and
applications for an -ibofix must go to him; declarations are handled
independently.
--
From the alt.religion.kibology FAQ:
"IS KIBO RELATED TO XIBO?"
No.
"WHAT'S A XIBO?"
A bad bozo, who isn't allowed.
"WHY DON'T YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT XIBO?"
I could if I wanted to.  See, I'm allowed to.  Xibo isn't allowed.  As
the saying goes, "You're allowed, unless you're Harry, Glass, Xibo,
Spot, Sandro Wallach, Noah Friedman (after midnight), Jay Paul Chawla,
or especially Patrick L. Obo."
[Note late addition:
"I do believe that [Andrew Beckwith (q.v.)] was never allowed, under the
doctrine which clearly states the rules:
8.1.3a (617)    People whose identity-fields formatted as standardized
spec K112-41/J positive-match the regexp '^ANDREW B*$' shall have their
allowedness status classified below level 'ALLOWED' but above level
'LEVEL BELOW NOT ALLOWED'.  Identity-fields matching '^ANDY B*$' will be
assigned allowedness levels on a case-by-case basis, the processing of
which may only be expedited if the user comes through with the dough.
                                                        -- K."]
[Also:
"I have decided to forgive Jay Paul Chawla for his past sins.  I can
afford to be magnaminous because I am no longer a mere net.personality
or a net.legend but a major marketing phenomenon.
And besides, forgiving and removing from a killfile are not the same thing.
                                                        -- K."]
[Also also, Kibo has also declared George W. Hayduke to be Not Allowed, for
nominating Joel Furr and Sean Ryan for Kibo and Vice-Kibo, respectively.]
"WHO'S XIBO?"
A very bad bozo, who still isn't allowed, no matter how much he whines
about it.
"WHERE'S XIBO?"
Sittin' in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere .plans for nobody.
"WHY IS XIBO SO FAR AWAY FROM KIBO?"
Because they're on opposite sides of the real world.
--
Contrib. post: (from Kibo)
 When Sean "Xibo" Coates visited Boston a couple years back, he took the
MTA, and I can prove it--there's no MTA here any more because Xibo took
it.  Xibo is evil!  In a good way, though.
 Scott "~ibo" Ramming has been formulating a secret plan to rename the
MBTA to the META for some time, which would allow the trains to emply
"fuzzy" logic so that any train could stop at any station at any time,
even ones that hadn't yet been built.  I prefer this to A. J. Deutsch's
"Subway Named Moebius" concept, in which one simply writes a short story
about London subways and then changes all the station names to Boston
ones randomly when reprinting the story so that key action occurs in
nonexistent places.
--
May post as Xibo <[e-mail]>. This is uncertain.

Dan Gannon (q.v.) has followers and imitators:
--
Hermann: Net-pseudonym of Milton John Kleim, Jr. Posts as
 [e-mail]; also seen on alt.skinheads, along with:
--
Pendragon (White Pride! White Power!): posts from delphi.com. Sigh.
--
Ross Vicksell: can be seen on alt.revisionism.
--
Vitaca Milut (Pronounced: Vitacha Milut) and Zeljko Jericevic:
 are attempting to link Serbo-Croatia with various Nazi war horrors. Newcomers
(as of 12/93); Vitaca was posting from [e-mail] and Zeljko
from uwaterloo; Vitaca is *now* posting through an anonymous service that
*appears* to be administered by John Palmer (q.v.) (it's on
tygra.michigan.com...).
--
Martin S. Singleton (Lots of people suffer in wars- so what if Jews do too):
 another rabid anti-Semite... from alt.revisionism. Quotes:
>What is so special about Jews that when they die like other people there has
to
>be SUCH A BIG UPROAR ABOUT IT?
>I've never heard any Jews bemoaning the plight of the complete extermination-
>in the most grisly ways of perfectly peaceful people, like cutting off there
>hands and feet and roasting them slowly over hot coals- of the Pygmy
>population of Tasmania in the nineteenth century.
>What about what the Jews are doing to the Palestinians?  Do you think they
like
>to be tortured in the Isreali [sic] prisons and jails with no due process of
>law, of which you profess yourself a proponent, while at the same time you
are
>probably a duel [sic] citizen of Isreal and the US?
>Stop harassing me, you wolf in a sheep's pelt pulled tightly around you while
>you lie in wait for your prey.
Another quote:
>Why don't you filthy swine stop tormenting me with your libel? Now even that
>'ole "Nazi"-hunter, Ken Mcvay, is assaulting me with his propagandized lies.
>Stop bludgeoning me with your hollow-cause.
>Fortunately help is on its way. To the Fourth Reich: if you need more raw
>material for heavy industry, try South Afrika.  How about Oberkommando von
>Kalifornia?
>Les rad, these mongrels are getting on my nerve.
>World War III will save the human race from America and the Jews.
>Hooray for the Great German Nation!!!!
Posts as [e-mail] (Martin S. Singleton).

Marc Barrett (that guy in comp.amiga.sys.advocacy):
 spins tales of doom, trashes Amigas. His answer to every question is "Throw
your Amigas and DOS machines away and buy a MAC", but he doesn't own a
machine.
--
"I refuse to acknowlege the existance of the Mac vs. MS-DOS, VMS vs. UNIX,
and Amiga vs. Everyone flamers."
---Bill "final authority on Loons" VanHorne

Minas Spetzakis:
Contrib. post:
 How about Minas Spetzakis, star of stage, screen, and rec.humor?
I got to where I could recognize his first name in rot13 (Zvanf)
before I gave up reading noise-ridden rec.humor to free up time
to read other noise-ridden groups.
--
 Ah Minas! (I thought it was Spitakis, but you probably know better than
me.) Star of rec.humor.english.as.a.second.language.  Made a brief
appearance (what? about 4 years ago?), and soon became a part of the
folklore of rec.humor. Any really unfunny joke, told very badly, was
soon greeted with "Minas? Is that you?", no matter who told it. (Much
like the references to Sven in a.f.w these days, but with Sven it's just
good natured fun.) He wasn't a loon, but he did become part of the
group's folklore. This is something I've noticed: each group (or
conglomeration of groups) has its own folklore, about the poster from
the past (or present) who everybody talks about and knows about, but
people outside that group have no clue about.
--

Roy Crabtree:
Contrib. posts:
 Just one more net.loon occurred to me-Roy Crabtree, he of the text editor
that makes everything he writes look like experimental free verse, and who
cannot be dissuaded of his belief that insect vectors have played a
significant role in AIDS transmission (the source of a
much-longer-than-necessary thread on alt.conspiracy last spring).
--
 Crabtree is a definite winner: remember his campaign accusing Ted
Frank of "obversion", whatever the hell that means to him?
--
Apparently to be found in misc.legal, following up Ted Frank's posts with the
aforesaid editor...

K*nt Pa*l D*lan (Kent Paul Dolan) (you foolish child, I have more intellect
 in my ..etc, etc):
Contrib. post:
 What about that man from xanth, Kent Paul Dolan ? While not strictly a
net.loon, K*nt has probably pissed off more of the net than most with
his bombastic insulting style and unshakable beliefs. I last saw him
in talk.politics.drugs about two years ago - any recent sightings ?
--
 Oh, definitely.  K*nt's claim to infamy was the rec.arts.sf-lovers
reorganization of late 1991, for which he was the vote-taker; any
survivors of that fiasco will attest to his warm, diplomatic style
and high ethical standards. [Not!]
--
 A mention of the Grand sf-lovers reorg fiasco just brought back
memories of K*nt P*l D*lan... I hardly dare to type his name
out in full, Kent Paul Dolan.
 He was the vote - taker for the first attempt of rec.arts.sf-lovers in
1991.  His vitriolic comments and threats to throw out what he
considered "ballot box stuffing" votes led to the first immediate revote
in the history of Usenet because of procedural problems, and to the
eventual creation of the Usenet Volunteer Votetakers.
 Also, he served as the inspiration to one of the best pieces of
net.humor ever published, the Usenet Flame Olympics (or somesuch, it's
been some time) of 1991.
 Shortly after the revote was called, he announced that he had better
things to do with his life, was about to get married, and vanished
off the net; I have never seen him again, nor heard anybody who has.
 BTW...  does anybody still have a copy of the Usenet Olympics around?
This piece of now nearly ancient net history certainly would bear a
repost ;-)
--
 Kent was apparently a sufferer from monopolar depression; he had treatment,
and was released as "improved, not cured"; a copy of the UseNet Olympics is
available as a miniFAQ, and can also be found at ocf.berkeley.edu,
/pub/Usenet_Olympics ... he also had a text editor, apparently, which posted
in
columns about 20 characters wide (see said miniFAQ...).

Peter Trei: [From Peter himself, in a list of net.loon nominees]
last, and probably least...
Peter Trei
 Monomaniac who greps most of Usenet for mentions of Freemasonry,
and posts corrections if he feels the fraternity is being slighted.
Sporadically publishes the Masonic Digest on a mailing list. Not too
good at answering his email. At least he has a sense of humor...
Posts as <[e-mail]>.
--

Mike Dahmus ("Linux sux! Linux sux! OS/2 iz g00d 4 U!"):
 Often seen on the comp.* groups and alt.folklore.computers. Argues at
length (about NextStep, Unix, OS/2, etc.), and crossposts. Also posts to
alt.religion.kibology, rec.sport.basketball, and rec.sport.football.college;
good at baiting flames, to the point of being the curator of the
rec.sport.football.college Hall o' Bait (they call trolling "fishing" there
for some odd reason). Has at least one archenemy, Andrew Bulhak (q.v.), whom
he
calls "Lumpy (tm) 'Andrew' Bulhak"; Bruce Ediger has also been mentioned.
Works
for IBM at last report. Has some people convinced he's convinced Penn State is
God's gift to the US athletics conferences, and that OS/2 R00LZ... Has his own
alt.fan group. Tied for eighth place in the Kibo election. Will argue
st00pidly
with NextStep advocates. May or may not be Not Allowed at the moment.
Contrib. post:
 And then there's Mike Dahmus, who claims that UNIX sucks and everything other
than OS/2 is trash and that UNIX's "mv" command is brane dam3jd because it
doesn't refuse to move files across drives.
--
Sigh. What a load of Bulhak. The actual reasoning was - "as long as OS/2 is
stuck with the concept of drives, and as long as it has a dynamic swapfile,
it's probably a good idea that 'move' doesn't let you move across drives."
--
Posts as [e-mail] / [e-mail] (Mike Dahmus).

Compilation copyright (only) [e-mail] (David DeLaney); this
does not claim that individual contributors' copyrights have been transferred,
only that the compilation and original portions thereof are copyright. Please
feel free to distribute freely, charging no-one.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 09-15-94                         Msg # 27128
  To: ALL                              Conf: (2120) news.answers
From: [e-mail]         Stat: Public
Subj: Net.Legends.FAQ (Noticeab        Read: Yes
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 @SUBJECT:Net.Legends.FAQ (Noticeable Phenomena Of UseNet) Part 3/4
 @PACKOUT:[e-mail]
Message-ID: <net-legends-faq/[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.usenet.kooks,alt.answers,news.answers
Organization: Brown Ajah, r.a.sf.w.r-j Division

Archive-name: net-legends-faq/part3
Posting-Frequency: Every 73 days
Last-modified: 9/13/94

Andrew Bulhak (Back off, man, I'm a kibologist):
 One of the more distinguishable of the a.r.k supporting cast. Will argue
(usually on the right side) at length, especially against Mike Dahmus (q.v.).
Will mercilessly parodize the clueless, and does a mean B1FF (q.v.)...
Has canonical .sigs which show up periodically. Conducted the vote to elect
the new Kibo (q.v.) (don't ask...), which Joel Furr (q.v.) ended up winning
(this apparently was bad for his usual good humor, though). [7/94: Joel has
passed the title on to one Daniel M Silevitch ([e-mail]), who
may
or may not know what to do with it, but who asked "Why is Joel calling me
`James', anyway?...] Slavers in fear at the thought of new waves of
net.newbies; may be justified in this. Is reportedly in Kibo's killfile...
Came in first in the recent (5/94) vote for most evil net.personality, beating
Kibo by 192 votes (and Argic by 227); consensus seems to be that this is due
to his vote-trolling abilities rather than any residuum or effluent of pure
unrelenting evil. Posts as [e-mail] (Andrew Bulhak).

Puma!:
Contrib. post:
 Those who used to frequent the rec.arts.anime group still remember
the bizarreness that was
        PUMA!PUMA!PUMA!PUMA!PUMA!PUMA!PUMA!PUMA!PUMA!PUMA!
        PUMA! Meddle-not-in-the-affairs-of-PUMAs-for PUMA!
        PUMA! you-are-crunchy-and-good-with-ketchup! PUMA!
        PUMA!PUMA!PUMA!PUMA!PUMA!PUMA!PUMA!PUMA!PUMA!PUMA!
--

Lewis Stiller ("Examine frames XXX through YYY of Aliens to see that..."):
 Alien (the movie) aficionado who was known for idiosyncratic cinematic
analyses
and obscure---some say idiotic---posts. Crossposted to alt.religion.kibology
and rec.arts.sf.movies, semi-incessantly (he flooded a.r.k for about two weeks
with Alien posts and then dropped to `normal' (for a.r.k) posting frequency
and subjects - but often xposted to r.a.sf.m, causing some interesting
followup chains...). When posting on subjects other than Aliens, was
entertaining to read - sample quotations: "About an ai, an anoa, and an eft?",
"Pan-and-scan: what's the point?", "Higgledy-Piggledy / Kibo Ubiquitous, /
Greps for his name in the / Happynet spool. // Interdimensional / Cyberspace
deity: / Didaktyliaios / Dada is cool.". He has been Not Allowed (by Kibo) to
post about laserdiscs to a.r.k for a while until he fulfils some Kibo-imposed
condition which I (and he) disremember, possibly related to Terminator... and
has nearly ceased posting altogether, about the time the first version of this
FAQ came out... he says it's because he's too busy, and has a thesis to feed.
We'll miss him.
--
 Entertaining and totally non-serious (come *on*... Argic self-aware? it
is to laugh!) quote: "Well, maybe Terminator 3: Usenet becomes Skynet is a
bit of a stretch, but Terminator 3: Internet becomes Skynet could be a
reasonable plot. And what with the rtm worm, the increasing Net connectivity,
the .mil sites...I can see it. Like, what would happen if Serdar Argic became
self-aware?" [tying together the Imminent Death of UseNet perennial
threads, which were then focussing on Delphi, with then-current speculation
on the plot of T3...]
--
Contrib. post:
 As another nominee for the latter category, I offer for your
consideration Lewis Stiller, ALIENS aficionado, [Lewis says the correct
terminology is "ALIEN aficionado", please.] who singlehandedly triggered and
sustained a flamewar which must have doubled the volume of rec.arts.sf.movies.
Stiller tried to get an official net-vote to have ALIEN^3 removed from the
list
of Alien movies, and argued his points in all areas with a precision grasp of
the Alien movies only possible to someone with an LD player and WAY too much
time on his hands.
--
This post's a collector's item - Sea Wasp is not *factually* incorrect that
often... Lewis held an unofficial (official? on Usenet? Hee hee)
rec.art.sf.movies vote to determine whether Alien fans consider Alien 3
canonical, i.e., part of the Alien/Aliens series. After long, vociferous and
acrimonious debate, from all sides, a bare majority of those responding
(24-22)
voted that Alien 3 should not be considered part of the canon. Highlights of
the flamewar included detailed frame-by-frame analyses of key scenes in Alien
which Stiller used to support his position, and his fanatical insistence that
pan-and-scan VHS was an inappropriate way to watch Alien because pan-and-scan
destroys Scott's wide-screen compositions and the rhythm of his editing. Hey,
everybody's got to have a hobby... A miniFAQ by Lewis, explaining the Correct
Way To View A Movie, is available. Posts as [e-mail] (Lewis
Stiller).

Valeri Fabrikant (the only net.loon who actually killed people):
Contrib. post:
>I know this is in very bad taste, but what about that guy Fabrikant, who
>ranted incessantly for two weeks about a conspiracy at his university
>not to give him tenure (the newsgroup was sci.research; the university
>was somewhere in canada; montreal?).
 (Someone finally got sick of it and said "Well, why don't you do something
about it?".)
>He then went and shot half-a-dozen staff
>members! He posted something from jail later, I believe; or rather he
>wrote something on a laptop and had it posted. I probably still have the
>collection of posts.
>>His trial was very bizarre; he want through many lawyers and finally
>>"defended" himself; the cornerpiece of his defence, I believe, was to
>>call the judge a Muppet. Very sad, and very nasty.
[Actually, he called the members of the court, Muppets, and the judge, King
Muppet.]
>Hey, if you really want loons, be serious!
 Eeeeuuuuwww.  Tacky.  No Fabrikant.  Let's keep it light-hearted, ok?
---Bill "HELP!!! (sound made by man drowning in loons)" VanHorne
P.S. I said earlier that cataloging every loon on Usenet would mean
 cataloging 76.3% of all posters. I now think the number is closer
 to 86.3%. And rising.
--
> I beg to differ.  Prof. Fabrikant, a Soviet emigre, really was being screwed
>royally by the EE department at Concordia.  He spent almost 10 years there
>and did some outstanding research.  Still, they wouldn't grant him tenure and
>kept renewing his contract.  He claimed that his chairman and other
professors
>in the position of power blackmailed him into putting their names as
co-authors
>of his work.  This sounds quite plausible, considering that the chairman

It is standard practice in academia to put your chairman as co-author.

>co-authored hundreds of papers in various fields with numerous people in the
>department.  Fabrikant sued everyone in sight and was winning his case when,
>unfortunately, he snapped.  He brought a bagful of guns to the department and

Snapped?  He tried for nearly a year to get a gun permit, but nobody would
sign the part where it says that the applicant is mentally stable.  He even
threatened the life of the department secretary to get her to sign.
Obviously a very stable person.

>killed 5 people (mostly graduate students, I think).  It's a pity the
>chairman wasn't in the office.  That lazy bum...
> Also the judge in the case was obviously an anti-Semite prejudiced against
>Soviet emigres.

Maybe he was just prejudiced against people who call him a muppet.
--
[also from Bill:]
 I have also been asked *not* to include L. Detweiler the PSEUDOSPOOFING
ALERT guy, as a couple of people who know him think he's a Fabrikant in
the making, and are worried about the safety of someone who Detweiler
mentions in his posts and who lives near him in CO.
--
[The jury is still out on Detweiler; despite two attempts (so far) to
post to news.answers a version of the FAQ inveigled from the FAQmaker, which
may or may not have been altered, I decided to leave him in ... for now...]

Barbara Abernathy (I am an excellent example of why some people's
 newsreaders should be limited to alt.flame):
 Omnipresent on alt.flame; replies, quoting at great length, with
somewhat-varied insults. Not to everyone's taste. Caused an uproar by
posting an alt.flame-type message calling someone she was mad at a child
molestor to alt.sexual.abuse.recovery, and later took Serdar Argic's side
in a typical zumaBot-followup that somehow got crossposted to alt.bigfoot
*and* alt.tasteless... seemed to have no clue as to who/what the Bot was.
Consistently high in the #Posts lists, except that she apparently lost her
net.access for a while, but is now back. Posts as
baberna@{bcpl,awk,scheme}.cse.psu.edu (Barbara Abernathy); also posted for a
time from tan.crayola.somethingorother, leading to the "__X__ Your machine has
a stupid name" entry on the Standard UseNet Bonehead Reply Form...

Willis Carto:
 originator (?) of much of Dan Gannon's material; also inspired Boris (you
cannot buy ham in Toronto because the Jooooos have taken over) Kuschel, along
with the other alt.revisionism nuts, Joe Gaut (a regular sparring partner of
Ted Frank's, and a tireless proponent of the proposition that everything
printed in "The spotlight" is gospel) and Lance Bledsoe (Audit The Fed!
Audit the Fed! It is evil!)
Contrib. post:
 Willis Carto is, as I remember, a founder, or, at least, a leading
light, of the Liberty Lobby, who are publishers of the *Spotlight* and
basically an anti-Semitic bunch.  I think he antedates USENET (that
bunch may date back to the '50's or so).
 I think Bledsoe is just a John Bircher, although I may be confusing him
with *another* John Bircher in "alt.conspiracy".
--

Joseph Dunphy:
Contrib. post:
 [Joseph Dunphy] of sci.research.careers and a few other places deserves
honorable mention. i didn't discover sci.research.careers until the week after
Fabrikant hit the news, so i can't tell you whether dunphy ever interacted
with Fabrikant.
--

Rob Reinhardt (The UN is a conspiracy):
 thinks the UN should be reorganized to make us better prepared for
when the aliens ask us to join the Federation.

Claire Gilbert (my Florida eyes can see the smoke from the Kuwaiti oil fires
 which is causing our weather to change -- really!):
Contrib. post:
 A PFH [poster from Hell?] on sci.<many> was so obnoxious her sysadmin had
to be begged to cease and desist her. At the time I was using VNEWS which
had no killfile capability. This PFH actually made me decide to learn Unix
with the express purpose of getting a newsreader (trn) with kill capability.
--

Homer Wilson Smith (Certainty of existence implies certainty of DESIRE and
 |certainty of LOSS, unbearable loss and pain):
 from alt.clearing.technology and/or alt.religion.scientology . A mini-FAQ is
available for him. Posts as [e-mail] or
[e-mail] (Homer Wilson Smith).

ZiPpY:
Contrib. post:
 on the hashnet, who is guaranteed to jump into every thread, and claims to
know everybody personally. Every time the conversation veers towards
normality, he posts yet another song about sheep-fucking.
--

Jarmo:
 Famous in soc.culture.nordic, wages a constant battle against everybody
else in the group, in his fight for the Finnish-speaking minority in
Sweden. He has even posted to soc.culture.celtic asking the Welsh to help
in his struggle. He got very little response. Either the Welsh people have
no interest, or they have trouble understanding his posts, which are in a
mixture of Swedish and Finnish. A bummer for the Welsh!

Dimitri Vulis:
Contrib. post:
 whose obnoxious, derivative and not-very-funny Soviet emigre jokes from
Brighton Beach were a weekly feature about a year ago on rec.humor . He
ignored completely any requests to stop. Eventually he started getting
flamed in demotic Russian-quite fun for those of us who could read it.
- Dan "And to think he felt it important enough to waste his two hours of
daily
connect time on it" Case
--
 so what _is_ the deal with vulis?  is "russian emigre" a codeword for
"jew", or for "russian emigre", or for something else?  (if i recall
correctly, minor and now somewhat reformed net.loon mikhail zeleny
claimed rather convincingly that vulis's posts contained certain
tell-tale phrases which are highly un-idiomatic in english
("dandruff-covered" was one of them, i think) which were dead
giveaways of classic pathological russian anti-semitism.)  so is vulis
russian?  an emigre?  a jew in some sense?  self-hating?  maybe a
self-hating russian jewish emigre who hates only the jewish half of
themself?  or maybe they hate the russian half too?  are they now or
have they ever been, while residing in america, on the payroll of any
branch of any soviet or russian government?  did they stop posting
russian emigre jokes when the paychecks stopped coming?  are they a
zhirinovsky supporter now?  the most recent messages posted by vulis
that i have seen seem designed mainly to convince people that both
zhirinovsky and valery fabrikant are (russian?) jews.  (it's very
likely true in fabrikant's case, at least.)  maybe vulis is a
self-hating supporter of zhirinovsky and fabrikant?
--
Posts on soc.culture.soviet, and is apparently something of an institution
there; likes to stir things up, and to flame and/or troll people. I'm not up
on which sides are good and/or bad on s.c.s, which among other things seems
to have been ravaged by Serdar Argic for a long time as well, driving away
many
of the gentler posters. Is currently engaged in flamewar with Peter V.
Vorobieff there. Posts from [e-mail] (Dimitri Vulis, CUNY GC
Math).

Roy Radow:
 Passionate defender of NAMBLA on several of the gay-oriented newsgroups.
Not really loon material (depending on your take on the subject, of course) -
just believes there should be no (or at least a lower than currently
available)
minimum age of consent for sexual relations, and has NAMBLA in his .sig. May
kiboze for NAMBLA. Unfortunately for his cause, people tend to groan out loud
when the Dread Word is mentioned, more because it's a Thread That Will Not
Die/Permanent Floating Flamewar than anything else, and that's in fact the
main reason I'm including him [because he's notable for, just by posting,
without even mentioning it in the post, touching off ThreadsTWND]...
Posts as [e-mail] (Roy Radow).

STella (bisexual leatherbyke pagan):
 alt.sex.* denizen. Mistress of the sarcastic flame. Helped found
alt.sex.bondage; hangs out there. A mini-FAQ is available (for the
non-maturity-challenged only). Not a loon - just has a distinctively..
ah.. unrestrained posting style. Has been referenced (along with Kibo) in
at least one guide to the Internet. Posts as [e-mail]
and [e-mail] (STella).

Elf! Sternberg:
 Seemingly omnipresent in any group having anything remotely to do with
sex or sexual orientation (recently sighted on rec.pets.herp, even). Try
alt.sex.wizards, alt.sex, or alt.sex.motss; Generally gives very good advice.
Posts the "Journal Entry" series of sex stories on alt.sex.stories/
alt.sex.motss/alt.sex . Quoted (sometimes extensively) in the alt.sex.*
FAQs. Cordially despised on soc.motss - but then nearly everyone on soc.motss
is cordially despised by someone else there... Posts from [e-mail]
(Elf Sternberg).

Gharlane of Eddore:
 Semi-master flamer. Notable chiefly for his nearly unbreakable habit of
setting followups to alt.dev.null, apparently in the belief that noone else's
words deserve to follow his. Can be seen on rec.arts.sf.written and alt.flame,
as well as alt.fan.mike-jittlov . Posts as [e-mail] (Gharlane
of Eddore).

Ted Altar:
 From rec.food.veg. Was semi-single-handedly responsible for prolonging
the discussion on whether or not to split r.f.v, and if so how, in
news.groups, past all humanly bearable length. The ultimate upshot of this
was the creation of rec.food.veg.cooking (moderated)...
Contrib. post:
 He did manage to kill one [proposal] when catsclaw was suggested as
moderator by using ad hominem attacks, but he couldn't stop the next
proposal, back[ed] by Stephanie da Silva (q.v.), featuring group moderation.
--
Posts as [e-mail] (Ted Altar).

John Stanley:
 Was waging single-handed a flamewar in news.groups (12/93) on what
the meaning, if any, of ABSTAIN in a UseNet vote is/should be/must be.
Notable in this only because he was apparently alone on his side. On the
other hand, was also conducting a well-done offense against Dick Depew
(q.v.), pointing out repeatedly that his (Dick's) ARMM proposals are
nothing more nor less than censorship. He has ended up in Dick's killfile,
along with Joel Furr (q.v.), because of this. Will argue for food, or
apparently for free, if he thinks he's correct; usually has good points to
make (although tends to be scornful about it), and can find holes in
opponents'
logic quicker than you can say DI$$EMINATION... Can be seen in news.groups
or news.admin.*; I cannot say at this point exactly what he'll be arguing
*about*, but it's a fairly good bet he'll be arguing about *something*.
Posts as [e-mail] (John Stanley).

Tim Pierce ("No.") and Joel Furr ("Will create newsgroups for food"):
 Not loons, exactly - Tim was a sysadmin at Amherst and moderates
rec.arts.erotica; just very very cynical (Tim) and very very optimistic
(Joel). Found on alt.config (Tim ambushing alt.*-group proposers and Joel
proposing new alt.* groups at a great rate [and newgrouping them almost
as fast {in recognition of which many admins refuse to create *any* group
newgrouped by Joel]) and soc.motss, rec.arts.erotica (Tim), and
alt.folklore.(sub)urban, alt.fan.lemurs, comp.society.folklore, and the hijinx
mailing list (Joel). A miniFAQ on Tim, by Joel, is available. More fun to
watch
than Abbott and Costello.
 Joel "flamed a proposed rmgrouping of alt.folklore.computers to ashes in
late 1992", and has his own alt.fan group, created by Serdar Argic in
retaliation for Joel's newgrouping of alt.fan.serdar-argic; he furiously
opposed the RFD on soc.sexuality.zoophilia for unstated reasons (possibly
having to do with his long-running war against alt.fan.furry or animal
characters in MUDs). Seems to have been affected rather for the worse by
winning the election for Kibo some time back (you know what they say about
absolute power...); the hijinx mailing list, for "getting out the vote" on one
side or another of controversial Big 7 proposals, came into existence shortly
after that, with him a major impetus. Recently created alt.folklore.suburban
(moderated) and took over the moderation of comp.society.folklore, in reaction
to the amount of "noise" on a.f.u and a.f.computers . Is putting out the
Serdar Argic Howling Through The Wires T-shirt (deadline June 7th 1994,
sorry),
as well as the Joel Furr "WILL CREATE NEWSGROUPS FOR FOOD" mousepad and
possibly the C&S Green Cards And Spam T-shirt. Is a major force behind
alt.fan.lemurs, and apparently has a pet lemur Nigel and does good works for a
Primate Research Center near him.
 Tim, on the other hand, has a style that grows on one, and has basically
simply said each objection to new alt-group proposals so *many* times (because
there's so *many* people that drop in saying, for example, "I want
alt.fan.shostakovich!!") that many of them have been worn down to a simple
"No.". Tim *will* rmgroup your alt-group newgroup if it's not been mentioned
on alt.config; that's his right, as it is anyone's, and it does help to keep
alt somewhat non-totally-exponentially-growing...
 Proposed as the counterbalances on the us.* hierarchy's Cabal, along with
tale (q.v.) and four other less-extremely-namespace-opinionated people. Only
time would tell if this would keep them completely away from alt.config...
however, since the us.* proposal was shot down in flames, and discussion was
moved to us.config, a new us.* hierarchy (and their involvement in it) may
or may not ever actually emerge...
Post as [e-mail] (Tim Pierce) and [e-mail],
[e-mail], jkfurr@[snarf,*ip].eecs.umich.edu (Joel Furr).
There is no truth to the rumor that "Furrfu!" refers to Joel.

Uncle Fester (Kiss Me - I'm An ASSHOLE!):
 Father-figure to alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.d . Helps rein in the
flames on occasion; former poster of the Official Assholes of a.b.p.e List
(simply a periodic listing of those who have posted non-binary stuff to the
binary group in the last period of time in a format designed to get their
attention - he's first on every list, of course, because the List has to go
on a.b.p.e to be effective). Was famous for his posting prolificacy when he
first showed up on a.b.p.e; real name: Tim Hester. Has been lying low lately,
but can be seen on talk.bizarre. May be reinstating the List soon... but
maybe not from nyx, as his crusade against alt.sex.intergen (he believes
a group for discussing, among other things, pedophilia, deserves only
post-bombing) seemed to have temporarily shut nyx down... (they *said* it was
for "a planned University wide network outage (for maintenance)", which shows
the importance of timing...). Sadly, the Uncle Fester persona has been retired
lately, with Tim now posting under his real name... Posts as
[e-mail] (Tim Hester).

Brad Templeton (Is that a ... Dave *Barry* post I see?):
 ClariNet founder and owner. Creator and former moderator, for years, of
rec.humor.funny, back when it *was*. Some time back was engaged in
per^H^Hrosecution via news.admin.* of the binary erotica groups for massive
copyright violations; thinks it's every UseNetizen's duty to a) admonish the
poster of each and every copyright-violating post and b) notify the magazine
it's taken from... may have been exposed to Clarinet's policy meetings for a
bit too long, but this attitude is quite understandable, given that it's the
source of his income, and that nothing less than vigorous enforcement of
ClariNet's non-re-feeding/non-re-posting policies will even slow down the
flood of people wanting to re-broadcast syndicated news items and Dave Barry
columns on UseNet [Note: Dave Barry's column finally became a casualty at
Clarinet due to exactly this problem - the people that Brad buys it from
got one too many complaints about the rebroadcastings, even with all Brad's
work hunting them down, and cut off Brad's supply lines...]. Is *also* a
fervent supporter of free speech on UseNet (along with several others such as
Karl Denninger, each in their own separate way). Has been UseNetting since
1981... has played "devil's advocate" on news.admin.* against the large group
of people wanting to toss advertising entirely off of UseNet in the wake of
the Canter&Siegel spam. Tends to take Karl Denninger's side whenever the
latter
starts up his "the a.b.p.e.* groups are full of copyright violations and
anyone who takes them is violating the laaaaaaw!" crusade, seen intermittently
on news.admin.misc and a.b.p.e.d ...
Contrib. post (actually, a .sig):
 Reposting a ClariNet article to any Usenet newsgroup is a violation of
copyright.  However, making fun of Brad Templeton is perfectly legal.
--
Posts as [e-mail] (Brad Templeton).

Don Black:
Contrib. posts:
 Someone nobody's mentioned is Don Black, who believed that Jews are
literally descended from the Serpent in the Garden of Eden.
--
 He was living in Alabama in the mid to late 80's. My girlfriend did a
telephone interview with him for a social studies project.
--
 He used to be on Prodigy, too. I think he was big in the Louisiana KKK.
Daniel "And he worked in the David Duke campaign" Case
--

Rikiya Asano ("You so funny"):
Contrib. posts:
 I'd like to nominate Rikiya Asano, who posts on talk.politics.guns,
soc.culture.japan, et al: "All Americans are violent racists!"  There is
much speculation that R.A. is a phony, i.e., not Japanese but just
pretending to be by using broken English, references to 'Nippon', etc.,
but the jury is still out. Talk.politics.guns attracts a lot of live
wires, especially those who believe that Clinton is a [leftist,
socialist, Marxist, Communist, Nazi, traitor] and is itching to turn the
U.S. into a Marxist state. Anyone playing "Spot the Net.Loony" should
check it out, but be aware that a little t.p.g. goes a long way.
--
 Also posts to soc.culture.asian.american too, about how he's such catnip
to the ladies. This came in especially useful during the flame war on
alt.config about alt.sex.fetish.oriental and its proposed successor,
alt.appreciation.asian. Rikiya there went into great detail about his
own sex life and masturbatory habits-I was quite surprised. Many people
think he's a poseur, though. But do these people post to other newsgroups,
too? It hardly surprises anyone that talk.politics.guns attracts a high
degree of loons.
--
 I used to wish Rikiya Asano was [an AI program], but unfortunately he has
turned out to be a real civil engineering master's student at CMU. I've come
across him twice.
--
 [Note that *many* of the talk.politics.* groups are hotbeds of flaming and
odd behavior; thus this isn't really grounds for FAQ inclusion unless the
behavior gets spread to other, ususally-quieter groups...]

Andrew Wiles (My proof is unfortunately far too large for this newsgroup):
Contrib. post:
 I would like to nominate as a quintessential non-net non-loon:
Andrew Wiles. (Marilyn [vos Savant], if you're out there, shaddup.)
Over in sci.math, one of Wiles's graduate students has had his
email response to a fan, answering some of the fan's questions,
posted by the fan. Here are three relevant extracts:
>First of all, I should let you know that he almost never reads his email,
>and does not read newsgroups at all. The only reason he posted
>to sci.math was because he felt he had to make some sort of
>announcement in light of all the recent rumors, and someone on
>the faculty helped to show him how to post to a newsgroup. ...
>Since Prof. Wiles has not even been keeping up with all the rumors
>surrounding the status of his proof (when I asked him about a few of
>them, he said that he had not heard of them at all!), instead spending
>his time on the proof itself, I don't think he has paid much attention
>to what Marilyn has to say. ...
>I suspect he probably doesn't even know who Ludwig Plutonium is! :)
 I suspect he probably doesn't even know who I am, either, even though
we were once co-guests-of-honor at a party a friend of mine threw....
--

N.O. Monaghan:
Contrib. post:
 Another one who occurred to me-N.O. Monaghan, seen in many of the same
groups as Jack Schmidling was, and a great fan of Fascism, the medieval
Catholic Church, and the British National Party.
--

John De Armond (I cheer every time a pig is killed):
Contrib. post:
 In that vein, I think John "I cheer every time a pig is killed" De
Armond would have to get some recognition, especially since he posts
to alt.law.enforcement.
--

AJ Teel (Sui Juris):
Contrib. posts:
 While we're at it: don't forget AJ Teel ("Sui Juris"), who is
convinced (and wants to convince all of us -- over and over again)
that the Uniform Commercial Code (section 1-207, to be precise) will
get you out of ANY traffic ticket.
--
 Is that the same guy who also posts to alt.conspiracy and alt.activism
about how a) you can avoid paying income tax by simply not sending in a
return, and b) how juries have the power to simply refuse to convict the
person despite overwhelming evidence of guilt as a form of civil
disobedience? And other legal gimmicks-although I think he stopped with
the jury nullification thing because he (or some respondent) crossposted
to misc.legal and someone there dug up laws from several states that state
law says that juries are *required* to convict guilty people?
--
 This needs commenting.  It is true that juries have that power. There is
no law that can force them to convict a person, if they don't wish to do so.
As far as the state laws - there are certainly some that "appear" to
require a jury to judge a person based only on the law.  However, they
do not prohibit a person from judging the law, and finding the person
innocent because the jury feels the law does not apply in that particular
case.
--
 [and so on, and so on; there is intense debate on a sporadic basis over this
in misc.legal; the FAQ author is neither a lawyer nor willing to play one on
the net.]
Other contrib. post:
>Also, a hundred years ago people simply didn't trust paper money.
 Oh, go on, it can't have been *that* long since A.J. Teel left the net.
ObUL: Geo. Washington trusted silver as far as he could throw it.
Lee "faith, hope, and cherry tree" Rudolph
--
Can be found in (among other places) alt.conspiracy and alt.activism; has a
 .sig about fifteen lines long that must be seen to be believed. Posts as
[e-mail] (A. J. Teel, Sui Juris).

BJGW:
Contrib. post:
 Oh, my - how could I forget AFU's own personal contribution to the Loon
list - BGJW, the quintessential McGill poster, who nevertheless managed to
turn AFU into a BOT-war ravaged, large-killfile, bandwidth-wasting newscape
for several weeks. I don't think any loon has achieved more indirect
success and made so many people act so ridiculously than he has - not even
Serdar and Robert McE.
 Dan "and all because of a simple, stupid little programming error - but
that's a long story" Case
--
 But like Phil said about B1FF, BGJW is most likely a troller.  You're right
about the end results, however.  Here's a note I got from 'BGJW' himself:
Date:        Mon, 27 Sep 93 17:14:54 EDT
From: "E. K. Yersh" <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: Re: Hi Everybody!
In article <27tsk6$[e-mail]> [e-mail]
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
>>In article <[e-mail]>,
>>>Hi Everybody!
>>Or do I have to throw it out because it's from McGill?
>I'm almost 100% convinced that McGill is the creation of a really old hat,
>there's no other way to get this consistent throughput of stupidity from
>one site for so long...
>ObULSpreaderoftheDay:  Lewis Grizzard.  He may be funny as hell some of the
>time, but he tells many. many ULs as true stories.
>--
>Jason R. Heimbaugh (CatStyle) [e-mail]
>Two (unnamed) people on campus debugging telnetd code:
>"Oh, I'm missing a colon."
>"So is my aunt."
 Jason, listen up. I'll let you in on a theory of mine.
 My theory is that all these clueless messages are written by the same guy.
I think that there's really only one guy at McGill who posts on AFU. What I
think he does is that when he discovers terminals which students have used
but not logged off from he posts a message from their account and purposely
makes the content idiotic thereby feeding the impression that McGill is an
institution for boneheads.  He likely gets a kick from the reactions to the
messages and from knowing that he's been able to decieve even that higher
strain of humanity that is active on AFU.
 Your Pal: BGJW
--

stx1606 (Come on, I can't HEEEEEEAR you!):
 Of alt.sex.bondage, talk.religion.misc, and alt.binaries.pictures.erotica;
went from group to group trying to fan flames. Asked for non-consentual
rape stories on alt.sex.bondage and then started to use the rape stories as
proof that ASBer were not tough on Rape. He tried to get talk.religion.misc
people involved in the fight. No one took the bait... He then proceeded to
revive the "let's get the queer pictures off a.b.p.e by splitting it"
flamewar for about two weeks. Quote: "I have been washed in the blood of
the lamb and that stain will never come off!" Unable to recognize satire
at .23 milimeters. Unable to buy a clue, unwilling to rent to own. Seems
to have decomposed. The alt.syntax.tactical crowd (not based in a newsgroup,
but who go from newsgroup to newsgroup trying to touch off massive flamewars)
seems to be stx1606's spiritual heirs...

hshen; hollystone s. (An artificial (dis)intelligence project):
Contrib. post:
 One more is a person who posts vindictive and semi-coherent articles in
some sci.* groups -- I've seen him/her most often in sci.math. The name
field has been "S. Hollywood", "S. H.", and "S."; the username has at
times been "hshen", I think. I can't remember the sitename -- some uni-
versity in the western US, I think. This person was active within the
past couple of months, but I haven't seen anything from him/her just
lately -- maybe I'm not reading the "right" groups.
--

Charles Packer:
Contrib. post:
 A person who comes across to me as a borderline crank is Charles Packer,
who posts occasionally in various groups where current events are being
discussed. His bugbear is errors, or things that he thinks are errors,
in newspaper articles or photo-captions. He is entirely coherent and
sometimes the things he thinks must be errors really are, so maybe he's
just researching a book or something rather than being a crank; but it
looks to me as if his skepticism level is set a good deal too high. Again,
I can't remember his posting site -- probably somewhere in the New York
area, since the newspaper he most often cites is -- see below.
 MARTIANS BUILD TWO IMMENSE CANALS IN TWO YEARS.
 Vast Engineering Works Accomplished in an Incredibly Short Time by Our
 Planetary Neighbors.            -- N.Y.Times headline, August 27, 1911
--

Ralph Taite (Walphie):
Contrib. post:
 What about Ralph(Walph/Waphie) Taite as a possible net.legend/loon??
He has completely taken over the likes of alt.feminism,soc.men,soc.women
and god knows what other groups..
Ah the hum of ^Walph is a Nazi^ , ^Walph rapes^ and similar subject
lines.. :)
--
> Is he the one (I think he was-he's a Texan) who believes women who have
>abortions should be drawn and quartered so they can understand how the fetus
>feels? No, wait-he believes that only women who have had more than one
abortion
>should have that done (The rest should be executed normally).
In both cases, you're thinking of Ralph Taite at UT Austin, who was offering
firearms training for those who wanted to attack clinics, and who also made an
honorable run at net.loon status by urging people to write my admins and
demand that I be fired because I was using drugs (all this, of course, based
on some conveniently timed anonymous e-mail which has since conveniently been
forgotten by Ralph), but for some reason he never actually did so himself.
--
[Note that many people/loons crosspost incessantly between soc.men, soc.women,
and alt.feminism; beware crossposting to these groups, as it can (but not
necessarily will) touch off everlasting threads in your group fueled by
cross-posters from these groups...]

Richard Schennberg:
Contrib. post:
 Pesters the alt.magic, alt.pagan, and talk.religion.christian groups (among
others) with his stories of satanic infiltration into the church. He is
convinced that a secret cabal of Mormon Freemasons (!) ruined his military
career and destroyed his marriage. He's been laughed off alt.magick and
alt.pagan, but is still infesting src. Posts as <[e-mail]>.
--

Joe Buehler:
Contrib. post:
 Don't see him much lately. <enter paraphrase mode>
     * The Catholic church was OK up until Vatican 2: the changes
since then were heretical. Clearly, Mass in anything but Latin is
a not good with God. If the Pope says it, it must be true...
     * The Spanish Inquisition was a Good Idea, since there were real
heretics out there...
     * Masons steal Holy Water and Consecrated Wafers from Catholic churches
(I haven't the foggiest idea what we're supposed to do with them).
     <exit paraphrase mode>
--
 it would probably be inaccurate to have him
say 'anything the Pope says is true'.  Actually, in his view a number of
recent papal statements have been dangerously liberal.  I haven't seen
him about lately, though.
--

drieux (drieux, just drieux):
 recently sighted xposted to a.r.k and alt.usenet.kooks...
Contrib. post:
 He was sort of like McElwaine, only he parodied himself; he posted
wacked-out conspiracy rants accusing people of being part of the
GreatEvilSatanicOxygenCartelConspiracy or something to that effect. Is he
still existent?
--
 As a sometime correspondent of "drieux just drieux", I'd like to think
he was not a parody (much less an ex-parody).  A luminous and eccentric
writer, yes.  But I'd rather have him on my team than most.
--
 ummm... are you trying to imply that the
GreatSeXularHumanistHeteroSexualPlot&GeneralIkkyPooperness
is not real?  Next you'll be tryuing to tell me that
KableTV is not a conspiracy!
(I'm only paranoid because I know too much)
...
Castle Wetware's resident Philosopher and Sniper is still
'out there' in all senses of the word.
just don't get into dueling references with him.
He'll push your buttons just to watch you jump.
ps - it rhymes with true.
--
 drieux is a real person and he's easily reached--I just called the
NASA Ames operator and she put me through to his office.  He wasn't
there, though, because he works second shift.  Of course, this only
works if you know his real name.
--
 Drieux is still around. He used to do incredibly horrible things for the CIA,
and Curtis Yarvin (as in the day) claims to have met him.
--
 Haunts talk.bizarre ... Posts from drieux@{vladimir.}wetware.com (drieux,
just
drieux).

Bob Webber:
 At one time, Bob Webber claimed to read (regularly) every news-article in
existence. Quite probably he no longer does this (simply because it's not
humanly possible and hasn't been for Some Time), but this does qualify him
for inclusion as a genuine net.legend... Has said that even up to just before
the Great Renaming he was still reading almost every newsgroup, though no
longer every article. Posted from (probably) @porthos.rutgers.edu .

John Covici:
 reposts Lyndon LaRouche stuff, coordinates the Larouche mailing list.
Contrib. post:
 Lyndon Larouche's mouthpiece on the net. Hard to tell what *he*
thinks (and I'm not sure I want to know), but keeps alt.activism up on
the latest ramblings of his mentor. These include (I'm not making this
up) a Zionist-KKK-Nazi-British-Mason-Apollonian conspiracy against
Western Civilization.
--
 He used to post LaRouchite propaganda from a site named
covici.com to some of the soc.culture groups.  He seemed to go off the air
about a year or so ago.  When alt.desert-storm was a going concern, he was
a frequent poster.  I, for one, do _not_ miss his rambling multi-hundred
line diatribes ...
--
John is still active on alt.activism (that bastion of rationality) where
he mostly posts Lyndon LaRouche's daily messages on an irregular basis.
He is also running a LaRouche mailing list, so that may be what is taking
up his time.
--
Last time I checked he was also quite prominent on talk.politics.soviet.
--
Posts as [e-mail] (John Covici).

Carasso (I'M NUMBER 2!):
 Roger David Carasso; reputedly the major popular artist of "xposted to
*.test". Claims to be "FOUNDER OF THE INTERNET"; alt.sex.carasso and
alt.sex.carasso.snuggles apparently existed at one time... Lives in L.A.,
reputedly married to BONNIE; GIFs are apparently available - ask him...
Contrib. post:
Very amusing on the net, dull as dust in real life.
--
REGARDING MYSELF, ROGER DAVID CARASSO, NET.GOD --
OTHER FACTS OF INTEREST:
- I've had 4 accounts at Berkeley disabled and closed.  3 account, 2 times.
- I've had 1 account at gypsy's friend's site closed.
- I've had 2 accounts at USC disabled and closed. 1 three times.
- I then cracked 50 accounts at USC, where all business majors in summer
  school are given the password "summer" and 80& don't bother to change it.
- I've had 2 accounts at Netcom disabled and closed.  One twice.
- I've had 1 the turing.org site taken down because the sysadmin liked
  me and refused to close my account.
- I've had my best friend lose his account at UCLA because of my posts
  from there.
- I've made it so MIT doesn't allow anonymous logins anymore, after a
  rash of my posts.
- I got a new account yesterday, and within 10 minutes root was taking
  to me asking if I was "*the* roger david carasso", and disabled my
  account.
- There are several others, but I can't remember.
--
 CARASSO:  Probable record-holder for most accounts suspended on
Usenet.  Had student account at USC suspended three times for "abuse
of Usenet".  Netcom suspended his account once, reenabled it, then
axed it.  Got a new Netcom account in name of then-girlfriend (now
wife) Bonnie Houck (who is believed by some to be fictitious), which
also got suspended.  When at [e-mail], trolled bait on various
groups under various aliases (most notably Rachel Dafni Christy
["Wherever you go, there you are, so PARTY!"], Bob D. Crane, and
Rajagopalan Dsomething-or Cother ["Be one with the Bhagavan" or
something like that]).  Rabid anti-Arab/Muslim, creator of
alt.wanted.muslim.gay (among others).  Now posting from inference.com,
his actual workplace; since he has to tone down or face the wrath of
his boss (who is monitoring him), his posts are now somewhat tepid and
bland.  May have been coiner of catchphrase "I SEE A GREAT NEED".
Still posts to talk.bizarre, where he is either loathed or reluctantly
admired.
--
 Brief disclaimer: I *was* monitoring Roger, but it ended up costing us
too much in snapped-off electrodes and chewed-through leather restraints.
--
I, ROGER DAVID CARASSO, AM THE CREATOR OF THE FOLLOWING NEWSGROUPS. PRAISE ME.
alt.newbie
alt.newbies
alt.best.of.internet
alt.herve.villechaize.dead.dead.dead
alt.fan.roger.david.carasso
alt.politics.bush
alt.politics.clinton
alt.politics.perot
alt.politics.gooley
alt.fan.gooley
alt.job.gooley
alt.gobment.lones
alt.wanted.moslem.men
alt.wanted.moslem.women
alt.wanted.moslem.gay
alt.imploding.kibo
alt.aldus.freehand
alt.fractal-design.painter
alt.pixar.typestry
alt.fan.howard-sterm.fartman
alt.flame.marshal.perlman.weenie
alt.flame.hairy-douchebag.merrideth-tanner
There are others, but I can't remember them!
--
 [e-mail], [e-mail]
& [e-mail] all have personal archives of some of the best of
carasso, and probably the man himself does too
--
Posts as [e-mail] (d.r. carasso); this may change rapidly...

Max Borisoff, Larry Pearson, and alt.christnet (Christnet is *copyright*!):
 Well. Where to begin? Two weeks of slowly-becoming-less-clueless attempts to
create the alt.christnet hierarchy, first by Max, and then by Larry
(apparently
Max's sysadmin, and equally clueless to start with); several posts to
alt.config (while ignoring email); a sudden insight, followed by *twelve*
a.c.* newgroups; dawning realization that people from Outside Christnet.Org
(located, apparently, in L.A.) were Posting In The Christnet.Org Newsgroups;
attempts to make the groups moderated; vague legal threats; flame and
counterflame (on alt.config *and* the alt.christnet.* groups, which had been
swooped upon with great glee by several people who thunk: "Aha! A place to
confront fundies!", Keith Cochran (q.v.) amongst them; the sudden appearance
of
Hansel Lee, and his equally quick disappearance when he a) made a threat while
posting from his military computer and b) forgot there might be superiors
lurking on alt.config; the final partial realization of the vastm^Hness that
is
Usenet by Max; and the creation (still slightly cluelessly) of the christnet.*
hierarchy, and subsequent partially-successful rmgrouping of the alt.christnet
hierarchy. All in all, about a month of More Fun Than Alt.Config Is Allowed
To Be, and as good a Bad Example of Unbridled Altgroup Creation as we're
ever likely to see... Post as [e-mail] and
[e-mail] .

Stephen Eisenberg:
Contrib. post:
 recently nominated as a net.idiot on can.general and known for
his knee-jerk support of the Canadian government in the Teale/Homolka
trial ban AND his tendency to hysterically flame anyone who says anything
in the slightest bit negative about Canada or positive about the US
(especially in comparison to Canada). AFUers may remember him for his
"Photographer For Hire!" sig and the fact that he had absolutely no sense
of humor during that whole debate on Canada's lower rate of firearm death
vs. the US. And the fact that he's from McGill and definitely *not* under the
control of BGJW.
--

Stephen Grossman (The Paranoid Randroid):
 Has "recently" been haunting the usual alt. group suspects (.activism,
.conspiracy, etc.).
Contrib. post:
 I've never corresponded with Stephen Grossman, but I've been in the same
room with him several times, and we worked on the same copy desk at
different eras; he occasionally writes letters to the editor which are
by no means identical to his net.postings -- if he makes it past the
nomination process, I could forward "fair use" quotations from a few of
those, maybe.
--

Scott Tai:
Contrib. post:
 I have followed *way too many* of these net.loon postings, and
I am finding it difficult to believe that no one has nominated Scott Tai.
Mr. Tai posts regularly to rec.org.mensa and to a variety of sci.*
newsgroups, using various accounts (some real, some not) and names
(including his latest, Sister Amy Tai, Instructor, St. Ann's Academy).
The primary purpose of his posts seems to be to argue with himself,
although agreeing with himself comes in a close second.
--

Michael Courtney:
Contrib. post:
>Does anyone have any of his legendary bits of wierdness from alt.atheism?
>His ramblings on The Queen of Heaven or even some of his (gasp!) poetry
>would be amusing. Or even the posts wherein he identified himself as God's
>Own Prophet(tm). I never bothered to save any of them, alas...
 I forgot to save that stuff, but I can certainly testify to the
existence of those posts.  When he first did the poetry, I asked him
in email why he was doing it, and his response was that he was attempting
to "get through to the people on alt.atheism".  His poetry was really
poor though, I rarely see worse stuff on rec.arts.poems.  You can
get his masterpiece paper via anonymous ftp.  I think it is on his
site at MIT.  :)  A few people even read it and it makes many of his
posts seem mild.
--
 As requested, here's a small sample of Michael Courtney's
posts to alt.atheism. Unfortunately, I don't have any of
his poetry, though perhaps someone else might.
 In fairness to Michael, he's definitely NOT a kook in
the sense of a Ludwig Plutonium. I think everyone on
a.a who remembers his first few posts would have to
agree that he genuinely seemed reasonable. He was
almost always pretty polite and cooperative, though
he'd occasionally dodge really uncomfortable challenges
to his fundamentalism. Understandable, I suppose, if
you ignore that the forum was a.a. Regardless, I
would have to say that Michael's credibility took a
serious nosedive after this post:
----begin quoted text----
>From [e-mail] Thu Jan 13 11:16:15 1994
Date: 15 Oct 1993 19:50:08 GMT
From: Michael Courtney <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: abortion and prophec

[e-mail] (Dan Yergeau) writes:
>[e-mail] (Michael Courtney) writes:
[deletions]
>Please quote the verse where God calls it murder.  Your personal
>relationship with God and your private revelations from God are not
>admissible.  Don't put words into your god's mouth.  I don't think he
>would appreciate it.
 I have God's permission to call abortion murder.  I am a
prophet sent by God to declare the destruction of the United  States
because of abortion.
[more deletions; Michael provides some biblical basis for
his anti-abortion stance.]
 If either God did not exist, or abortion was not murder, God would not
be planning to bring the retribution on the United States  that he is
now planning.  Let me be specific in this prophecy.  This is what the Lord
has said:
 Within 40 years the following things will happen:
 1. The United States will cease to be governed as set forth in the
Constitution.  The United States will also cease to enjoy the freedom
it declared for itself in the Declaration of Independence.
 2.  The blood of our young men will be poured out into th  streets,
for the Lord is a God of retribution.  Millions of Americans will die
on American soil in fulfillment of the Scriptures:
 If a man sheds blood, by man shall his blood be shed.
and,
 Atonement cannot be made for land on which blood has been shed,
except by the blood of the one who shed it.
 3. A dragon will rip open the pregnant women of the United States.
 4. This prophecy is unconditional.  No repentance can stop it.  Nothing
can stop what God has decided to do.
 God is not mocked, we will reap what we have sown.
 That's all of the prophecy, but I will add that if you are still alive
when it happens there is still forgiveness for your sins through Jesus Christ.
--
Michael Courtney    |Reply by email if you really want an answer to a question
[e-mail] |about something in this post.  I do consider flames,
                    |mocking or obscenity to be indications that you are not
                    |asking honest questions. P.S. I have the FAQ's.
----end quoted text----
 Understandably, many on a.a were a bit skeptical that the
Christian God would intervene as described above.
--
Posts as [e-mail] (Michael Courtney).

Captain Sarcastic (Oh how lovely):
Contrib. post:
>From: [e-mail] (Captain Sarcastic)
>No, I am most definately not joking.
>I plan on transcending Kibo in net.awareness, and this is but the
>first step in my campaign.
 To do this, all he needs is a heart, a spleen, and a brain..
and a spelling-checker.
>Power corrupts, but absolute power is kinda neat.
 "Captain Sarcastic" must be another of the net.AIs - what human being
would be caught posting "Captain Sarcastic" crap?  Mr. Ediger, please
add "Captain Sarcastic" to the net.nuts list, with 'delusions of grandeur'
as the diagnosis.
--
 Update: he's now got 12 regular posters to alt.captain.sarcastic, and
is gaining fast on Kibo's 29,000 ... and is optimistic... He's also claimed
that the "$2 bill almost thought to be intrinsically counterfeit at Taco Bell"
story happened to him, on several occasions.
 Update update (7/94): up to 190 posts/month, beating out fnet.general and
alt.fan.enya ...
Posts as [e-mail] (Captain Sarcastic).

Monica (Net.goddess):
Contrib. post:
 Maybe I'm late with this one, but how about Monica, the
Korean girl who was on the net one year, created a big
following, then went home to enter a nunnery, never to
see the Internet again.  Any data?
--
 Check out the FAQ in alt.religion.monica. Note that although
Monica herself is treated as a saint by her following (she
may well be), the group is almost entirely Korean.  But, if
we're going to worry about offending someone, we'd might as well
not have the list at all, right?
--
A minifaq on Monica is available.

Anthony Lest & Nabeel A. Rana
 (Rana is Rana, and Lest is Lest, and Lest is not Rana.):
Contrib. post:
>Then there's Anthony Lest, who took a massively controversial vote and
>yet never existed - "Rana is Rana, and Lest is Lest, and Lest is not
>Rana." (which was apparently the soc.religion(.islam).ahmadiyya(h) vote,
>which is due up again anytime now)...
 Rana definitely deserves a mention. After massive flaming and vote
fraud on "soc.religion.islam.ahmadiyya", he said a "friend" of his
would take the vote. After the vote, people began complaining that
their no votes weren't counted. Lest seemed to disappear, and turned
out never to have existed! Even better, they found out that Lest
always seemed to be logged in at the same time, and from the same
machine, as Rana.
--
 Rana is still around, and recently asked on alt.config about how to send
a newgroup message... posts from [e-mail] (Nabeel A. Rana).

IdEAL Order Psychic TV (clever satire):
 A, um, piece of experimental satire by Jeff Harrington and Elsie Russell.
See the minifaq for extreme details...

SN Mozumder (WHY ATHEISM SUPPORTS CHILD MOLESTING):
Contrib. post:
 But my real vote goes to Bobby Mozumder, one who
was far more persistent than Michael Courtney (q.v.) on alt.atheism, and
came up with a bunch of real gems. Many people even grabbed stuff of his for
sig material.
--
 He is the author of the theory that no true follower (tm) of
Islam can ever do any evil.  He came up with the theory of
temporary atheism to explain away problems presented.
Famous for quoting entire articles to add a few lines
(like another kook famous to alt.atheism, Bill Conner),
he tends to flee for a few months only to come back and
cause the traffic to double on the religious newsgroups
he frequents.  Also famous for the famous line that
atheism causes child prostitution in Tibet, as
well as the idea that all atheists are evil.  bobbe@vice.???.edu?
Got himself a second account when too many people learned
how to put him in a kill file.  Always uses S. N. Mozumder as
the real name (as far as I've seen).  Common nicknames
include Blooby, B.M.  Currently has left alt.atheism for
(he claims) other religious newsgroups, but I have
not seen any reports of him.
--
 Not quite. Booby is the _usual_ nickname for Mozumder, but I decided to come
up with "Blobby" the first time I flamed him on a.a.
 I can understand the reference to the dreaded Bill Conner, but I didn't
notice
much of anything concerning the equally deserving Michael Coutney. Hmmm...
Don't forget his infamous "Atheism is what I say it is and you're an evil
atheist especially if you call me on it" rag.
--
 S.N. "Bobby" Mozumder, Islamic proselytizer to alt.atheism.
Noteworthy for his complete inability to listen to what anybody said.
Posted articles with titles like "WHY ATHEISM SUPPORTS CHILD
MOLESTING".  Typical quotes from my file:
"Still, you have to be brainwashed by atheism to think you have morals."
"It is purely a mental problem that can be corrected when Islam is applied."
--
Posted as [e-mail] (Bobby Mozumder).

The High:
Contrib. post:
 The High was three brothers who came on the net in October ['93] and started
posting their bizarre conviction that Marvel and DC comics were to merge
("The papers are signed!") to alt.comics.superman, rec.arts.comics.misc
and rec.arts.comics.xbooks.  We're 95% certain that was bait, but...
The High also get marks for forging return paths, flaming anyone who
tried to suggest that a major reorganisation of the comics industry
might *just* have been in the trade press, and for setting follow-ups
to alt.desert.toppings, alt.fan.ketchup and other non-existent news groups.
They signed all their messages "Love and oodles, The High."  Towards the
end of their career, they stated trying to clog up racm with one-line
posts about Casper the Friendly Ghost.
 They were so hated by the rest of the newsgroup that they got kicked off
the net within one month of getting on, after an avalanche of complaints
went to their postmaster. For now, the High are dormant, but apparently
they're getting their net access back in the spring [of '94].
 There was also a guy calling himself The High II who claimed kicking the
High off was censorship, and started posting apparently serious messages
in the High's style as a tribute, but he gave up after a couple of weeks
when he realised nobody was flaming him.
 (BTW, the High is *not* the same person as racm regular Matthew High.)
Just thought he might qualify, for one of the shortest and most
incendiary net careers, if nothing else.
--

"Mark Ethan Smith" (Don't call me "miss"):
Contrib. post: [edited for pronouns]
 Hung out (no pun intended) in soc.women back in 1987-88. Passionately
believed that society was a man's world and that women were treated
as hopeless inferiors. Responded to all male posters by feminizing
their names in the hopes that they would feel the shame that the
English language imposes on women by having gender-specific words.
Was particularly fond of the word "diminutive." (All female-specific
words were diminutives.) Changed his name, reported from Susan, to
MES in hopes that men would see the typically-male name, assume that
he was a man and therefore not patronize him as an inferior woman.
Insisted upon using only men's restrooms. Seemed to have tremendous
inferiority complex on account of being born female. May have been
involved in the comp.women debate.
--
 I vaguely remember "Mr. Smith".  He posted to soc.feminism/soc.women
(possibly to some ancestor of these newsgroups as well).  The story was that
despite having two "X" chromosomes; he preferred to be called "mister" and in
all other ways to be treated as a man.  May have had his name legally
changed to "Mark" (from whatever it was originally).  He also claimed to
have worked for one of the armed services(?) and had gotten them to legally
treat him as a man rather then a woman.  I haven't seen any postings from
him in years, but then again I haven't regularly read any of the soc.*
groups in years either.  I don't think he is/was as 'unusual' as many more
recent legends; but probably deserves a mention.  Perhaps USENET was just a
quieter place in those days...
--
 "Mark Smith" was an annoyance outside Usenet as well; "he" (as the individual
insisted on being referred to) or "it" (as we liked to refer to the
individual)
was an unwelcome visitor to a public-access Unix system called M-Net, in
Ann Arbor, during 1986 and 1987.  Smith said all of the wonderful things
other posters have mentioned, and used the loginid "reason" -- the same login
"it" apparently used on the Well.
 I vaguely recall that Smith harassed one M-Net user by mail and, perhaps,
voice phone to some extent.
--
 Other than this "quirk" of Mr. Smith's, I also remember him to have an
itchy 'f'-finger as well as the requisite desire to post massive flames.
Additionally, I have vague recollections of a) threatened lawsuits and
b) accusations of conspiracy.
In general, most of the colorful net.personalities of 1986-1988 no longer
seem to be with us, or at least keep a much lower profile.
--
 Ah, Mark Ethan Smith! Now we're talking net.legend.
 Back in 1989 when alt.flame was newborn, and only had a fifth of the traffic
it has now, a certain Mark Ethan Smith entered the scene, and flamed
absolutely
everyone. This spread to almost every newsgroup imaginable, and rumour has it
that "Mark E Smith" had up to 50 flamewars going -at once. The poster turned
out to be female, and her access was revoked because she was violating the
fair
use policy... Strangely, some months later "Mark Smith" resurfaced in
alt.flame
and talk.bizarre, and people feared for another round.  Luckily, this was an
altogether more pleasant Mark Smith, completely unrelated to the legendary
spewer. This "new" Mark Smith wrote some very entertaining flames until mid
1992. But all this is legend, like Gene Spafford, Kent Paul Dolan, Patricia
O Tuama (Trish) etc.
--
>On the other hand, I guess I'm as glad as anyone that she's not a regular.
>Does anyone know what became of her?  (I ask, peeking through my fingers
>in case it turns out I'd really rather not know).
 The last I heard, which had to have been at least a year ago and
probably more like two, was that she was working in a copy shop in
Berkeley and seemed to be very happy and competent.  I retain a vague
memory that she was managing the shop, but am not entirely sure that
this is correct.
--
Posted as era1987@*.berkeley.edu (Mark Ethan Smith).

Compilation copyright (only) [e-mail] (David DeLaney); this
does not claim that individual contributors' copyrights have been transferred,
only that the compilation and original portions thereof are copyright. Please
feel free to distribute freely, charging no-one.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 09-15-94                         Msg # 27131
  To: ALL                              Conf: (2120) news.answers
From: [e-mail]         Stat: Public
Subj: Net.Legends.FAQ (Noticeab        Read: No
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 @SUBJECT:Net.Legends.FAQ (Noticeable Phenomena Of UseNet) Part 4/4
 @PACKOUT:[e-mail]
Message-ID: <net-legends-faq/[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.usenet.kooks,alt.answers,news.answers
Organization: Brown Ajah, r.a.sf.w.r-j Division

Archive-name: net-legends-faq/part4
Posting-Frequency: Every 73 days
Last-modified: 9/13/94

McElroy:
Contrib. post:
 The defender of the oppressed, McElroy has taken it upon himself to be
the press agent of various freedom fighters around the world, but
especially the Irish Republican Army. He spends his time uploading press
releases to soc.culture.celtic, often starting threads which use up to 50%
of the group's bandwidth. His posts may appear to be flame bait, but he
almost never enters into a discussion on the contents. He has accused some
British sites of censorship when he heard rumours that his posts were not
being distributed there (the rumours appear to be false).
--
Posts from [e-mail]

Jym Dyer (=o=):
 Notable mostly for his unique posting style and paragraph-starting markers,
which are usually =o= but sometimes go =/= =\=; has been known to use
ASCII illuminated letters in their place. Signs himself <_Jym_>.
Posts as [e-mail] (Jym Dyer).

Peter Plantec (Am I *really* a troll?):
 Short answer: yes. Probably saw Ted Frank's entry and decided a.f.u needed
a resident loon... Claimed to be dyslexic to cover his spelling errors; posted
wild claims to alt.folklore.urban and other places. Needed a bit of work on
his trolling technique, but had name-dropping down pat. Has not been seen on
afu in some time. Posted as [e-mail] (P. Plantec).

Clayton E. Cramer (Homosexual men often have that many in a week):
Contrib. post:
 Clayton seems to have made it his personal crusade to move into
relatively sane groups and turn them into stinking hells of political
flame by starting an anti-homosexual flame war.
--
Try ca.politics, ba.politics or *.politics.* groups. A sample:
#Newsgroups: ba.politics,ca.politics
#From: [e-mail] (Clayton Cramer)
#Subject: Re: Which comes first?
#Distribution: ba
#
#George Lambert <[e-mail]> wrote:
#>[e-mail] (Clayton Cramer) writes:
###Because "monogamy" for many gay men means they come home to the
###same guy after a long night of anonymous sex at the bars.  I have
###a few postings from soc.motss that refer to being married, yet
###then talk about disappointing sexual experiences out at the bars.
###
##Just like heaps of straight men and women, Clayton.  Wanna take on the
##straight crowd now?
#
#As usual, you are wrong.  The average lifetime number of sexual
#partners for Americans is around seven.  Homosexual men often have
#that many in a week.
--
Has recently been sighted on soc.history...
Posts as cramer@optilink.{UUCP|dsccc.com} (Clayton Cramer).

Philip H. Stromer:
Contrib. post:
 He was another hate-filled bigot who posted rants about homosexuality.
He became obsessed with the idea that anal sex would wear out the
muscles of the digestive tract, causing incontinence; he also posted
long gloating messages about "AIDS-infested faggots".
 Eventually, Sun Microsystems fired him for breach of contract, for
posting messages which were intimidating and harassing to other
employees.  He sued them, and lost.  Appeared again from some
commercial site or other, but soon sunk out of view.
 A salutory lesson to those who believe that the Internet is a license
to spew bigotry.
--
 Oh yeah. I've read this clown's rantings from time to time, and the one
thing that occurs to me is that he and little Danny Karnes may be the same
person. This isn't a _claim_ that they are, mind you, but you'd hardly
know any better from their posts.
--
 (from the Business section of the San Jose Mercury News,
Friday, July 31, 1992)
"Email epithets spark Sun lawsuit" by Brandon Bailey
 By his own admission, Philip Stromer liked to push the
boundaries of good taste when he sent out jokes and
political statements on his employer's electronic mail network.
 But according to a lawsuit filed this week in Santa
Clara County Superior Court, Stromer pushed too far.
 The 32-year-old technical writer says he was fired by
Sun Microsystems in April after he sent a series of
email messages that were anything but politically correct.
 The messages were posted on an electronic bulletin
board used by Sun workers to exchange jokes and
running commentary on a variety of topcis unrelated to their jobs.
 "I was just trying to make conversation," Stromer
said in an interview.  "I would normally take whatever position was
unpopular."
 His electronic broadsides ranged from pro-Israel
and anti-abortion arguments to jokes about AIDS
and graphic epithets about gays.  Eventually he
signed on to a nationwide computer network using
his terminal at Sun and typed what he described
as "some very extremely nasty stuff" on a bulletin
board used primarily to exchange sarcastic insults and vitriolic humor.
 A Sun spokeswoman said the company would not comment.
 The case raises interesting questions about the
increasing popularity of electronic bulletin
boards and message systems on which users can
type all kinds of outrageous statements without
having to look their audience in the eye.  Stromer
says he always signed his own name to his messages
and never meant to threaten anyone personally.
But several legal experts say that anti-discrimination
laws require management to step in when employees
create an atmosphere that is hostile or intimidating to any group.
 "An occasional joke, maybe," said Patricia Shiu, staff
attorney at the non-profit Employment Law Center in
San Francisco.  "But if an employer (allows) that kind
of thing repeatedly, he exposes himself to liability
for allowing a discriminatory environment."
 In his lawsuit, Stromer claims his bosses violated his
right to free expression.  He said he was just trying
to liven up the conversations that Sun employees routinely
conduct on a variety of email bulletin boards.  And he
compared himself with comedian Lenny Bruce.  (Stromer
said he had been scolded before but he drew his first
written reprimand from Sun for a joke about AIDS and
Magic Johnson, and another about AIDS and anal sex.)
"This type of exchange... is deemed by Sun management
to show poor judgment and blatant disregard for the
feelings of coworkers," said the reprimand.
 By Stromer's account, he was fired after he used his
work computer to hurl messages including graphic epithets
at gays across a national network.  The network automatically
identified the messages as coming from a Sun computer.
 Stromer is acting as his own attorney.  He said he sought
help from the American Civil Liberties Union and a
conservative foundation but both told him his employer
had a right to regulate his speech on company computers.
= = =
[Typed in by sf at dec and reposted w/o his permission, which is why
I'm leaving his name off / JBL]
--
 Aha. So _that's_ the reason he ceased to infest alt.flame! I just thought
that
his net access had been stripped, like a kook of a different stripe (I'm
referring to the dreaded David J. Rasmussen, of course), but I probably
just ran into his post-Sun output instead.
One does wonder how working for a company justifies the posting of such
crapola via a system the company owns. Ah well...
--

Douglas Bell (SPACE BANG! [ !]):
 Posts promos for his Wonderful SF Series to rec.arts.sf.written and several
other places. Has no sense of plot, editing, storyline, or what will attract
readers. Has no clue, and resists all attempts to force one on him. Doesn't
listen to criticism - the sure sign of a never-to-be-published-and-never-to-
know-why writer... Has shown signs recently of possessing a slight sense of
humor though.
Contrib. post:
I'd like to apologize in advance...

Douglas K. Bell <[e-mail]> wrote:
)Ever enjoyed an SF series so much you couldn't wait to get the next book?!
YES!  I can't wait for the next Xanth novel!!!!!!
)Hi, I'm Doug Bell !
                  ^^
Hi, I'm Scott Drellishak, SPACE BANG!
)I've written a series of 6 books about INFINITY CITY, an incredible world
)in a black hole and the adventurers of its exciting people.
Who would have believe that time dilation and death-by-tides could be SO MUCH
FUN?  Being crushed down to an infinitely dense point is the hoot of a
lifetime!
)I'm amazed at how much you all are enjoying the stories!
So am I. It's amazing to realize how much I can enjoy a story I've
NEVER READ! We're *all* waiting in anticipation for you to tell us what
our next opinion should be!
)Thanks for all your email support and comments!
)In the first book - "VAN GOGH IN SPACE" - an adventurer brings
)Vincent Van Gogh back from the ancient past to INFINITY CITY where he
)meets the "kind" of woman that has always caused him trouble...
...and the WACKY FUN never stops!  (btw, I like the way you use
"quotes" around the word "kind" -- this subtly but clearly lets "us"
know that SOMETHING "WITTY" THIS WAY "COMES"! [nudge, nudge])
)If you want an email   > > > >  F R E E   C O P Y   < < < <  of BOOK #1,
) just email me!
(W H Y   A R E   W E   S H O U T I N G?)
)The rest of the series is free by email, too!
And worth every penny!
)You'll enjoy them all!
It's MANDATORY!  Just imagine what would happen to Doug's ego if you didn't!
)Writing this series over the years has been a sheer joy.
Here, have a tissue...
)(I'm already
)well into book#7 - WASHINGTON & MOZART IN SPACE).
I can hardly wait for book#8 -- I suggest HITLER & EVA IN SPACE.  Or,
dare I dream, DOUG BELL ADRIFT IN SPACE?
)Best of all, people
)have as much fun reading the books as I do writing them!
It's true because Doug tells you it's true!  And uses exclamation
points to prove it!
)Doug Bell, Pleasanton, California USA
)[e-mail]
)Recent feedback:
(which has appeared in the last 3 months' posts)...
)"Book six was fantastic! Loss, gain, mystery, and now
)the start of a war! I think you have just reached "Epic" proportions with
)this series of novels. I am really enjoying them.
) It has been great reading your stuff..."            - Joshua R. Nelson
I agree!  And when Josh and I get out of high school, we're going to
grow up to be JUST LIKE DOUG!
--
Oy. Posts as [e-mail] (Douglas K. Bell).

Lt. Wilkes (My brain will be back in December:)
 Perennial alt.slack/alt.religion.kibology poster. Maintains that his brain
and body are in two separate places, and that one of them recently visited
Pluto for reasons having to do with the Fungi from Yuggoth; not a loon,
but does a darn good imitation of one, and is extremely fun to watch. A
candidate for the new Kibo (don't ask...) [he lost, by the way]. Responsible
for the Don't Let Lieutenant Wilkes Breed Society of alt.slack and
alt.discordia, which has apparently failed in its purpose, due to the Lt.'s
new girl(?)friend jack [no it's not short for jackie]. Unfortunately, jack
seems to have disappeared back into the Vague Morass Of Short-lived Usenet
Posters. Used to post from delphi.com (being one of its two saving virtues at
that time); now posts as [e-mail] (Lt. Wilkes).

Hoyt Stearns (Since space is quantized into units of 45.58nm,...):
 from sci.physics, proponent of "larsonian physics", which seems to think
space and time are quantized, and that the universe is 3D and Euclidean...
Posts to s.p & alt.sci.physics.new-theories, with followups to sci.physics
or sci.astro (to reap the ensuing flamewar) [deponent got caught this way
once... grrrr]. Definitely a loon. Posts as [e-mail] (Hoyt A. Stearns
jr.).

David de Hilster ("special relativity does not apply to decays"):
 Another classic crackpot (again, in the scientific sense). Posts to
alt.sci.physics.new-theories about Autodynamics, a theory which is supposed
to explain particle decays without invoking neutrinos; unfortunately, this
can't be done without violating momentum conservation, and David tries to
get around this by invoking a different kinetic energy equation and energy
imparted from an "external medium". Is also against the neutrino detection
from the supernova at Kamiokande. Autodynamics is apparently a creation of
a Dr. Carezani; David has at least one supporter at his site (Amnon Meyers).
Posts as David de Hilster <[e-mail]>.

Suzanne Forgach:
Contrib. posts:
 And, since there is a distinct lack of female kooks (even fewer than
one would expect from the low proportion of female posters) I think
Suzanne Fogarch (sp?) should be added. She's the only person I
remember seeing post something positive about Jesse Helms. Even the
right wing nutters that abound on the net find him an embarassment.
--
 A talk.abortion regular.  I've never seen Ms. Forgach, though I did
have an office down the hall from her at NOAO for a while.  A 'w' on
the computer she was logged into would always show 'vn talk.abortion'...
I suspect 'prolific' might be a more accurate tag than 'kook'.
--
 I remember Suzanne Forgach from way back in the dark days when I used
to post to talk.abortion. (I got better.) I don't know if she's
still kicking around, or if she was or is known on other groups.
I'm not sure if she really qualifies as a loon. Her postings
reflected highly conservative, religious beliefs, but being on the
right wing isn't an instant ticket to the insane asylum. She tended
to completely ignore logic when arguing (I vaguely recall that she
once tried to argue that homosexuality was wrong because other animals
didn't do it, and then when contradicted, turned around and accused
people of trying to justify homosexuality by saying that other animals
did it), but talk.abortion has never been a particularly rational
debating club.
--
 If you've ever seen any posts by Steve Chaney, Ralph Taite or David J.
Rassmussen on t.a., you'll know how obvious a statement this is. Ugh.
--
 Wait ... is she the one who tried to insist that her views
were backed by science, claiming support from a PhD in
astro, until someone actually checked her credentials?
--
 Back from the dim mists of time when I once frequented talk.abortion
along with an excess-O and a lamented late friend (using the same
monicker), I remember well Suzanne "A circle has two sides!" Forgach.
However, I doubt if she counts as a loon.  If anything, she is just
someone who have an interesting definition of "logic".  Good for a
chuckle from time to time, and I remember that the joke above was in
reference to an incident in which she said that a circle obviously has
two sides, since there is an inside and an outside!  She always draws
fire from the high-temperature flamers of talk.abortion, although not
all of them flame so well.  Amusing, sometimes ("When my cat coughs up
a hairball it makes a 'Forgach' sound." .... James Purdon), but mostly
out of proportion to what Suzanne deserves.  She even had a sense of
humour, I realised once with a shock ("To drieux: .......... with
great loathing, Sieuxanne Forgach").
--
 Forgach is still her usual cheerful self,
though I tend to agree with you she's not a loon -- she's just brimming with
plain hatred for a lot of people.  (You may remember her comment about women
who have pre-marital sex being lower than prostitutes, which comment I took
issue with.)
--
 Well, she's certainly not as crazy as our dear friend Michael Courtney, but
her views tend to be so fanatically pro-Catholic that she even has little
(if any) time for rational discourse with Protestants such as Steve Adams
when discussing one of her favorite bugaboos. I'm referring to differences
in theological outlook, of course.
--

Mark V. Shaney:
Contrib. post:
 Do you have MVS (Mark V. Shaney) in your list?  MVS dates back to about
1985, and was probably the first of the "automated posters" on Usenet.  It
would take postings from net.singles and generate new postings by combining
sentence fragments in almost-understandable ways, by using Markov Chain
techniques.  (Note the similarity between Mark V. Shaney and Markov Chain.)
It was written up in the Mathematical Games section of Scientific American a
few years ago.
--

Sean P. `Bandwidth' Ryan:
 has his own alt.flame.* group. Jumps into the middle of flamewars, generally
without checking the waters first...
Contrib. post (one guess as to whom it's from):
>alt.flame.sean-ryan: The first .flame group to be named after a
>net.personality (though not the first flame group).  Created by Eric
>Olson (though forged in my name) in response to an ongoing flame war
>which had been going on for the previous nine months in the local
>newsgroup ua.flame.  Specifically, I challenged Eric on the fact that
>he only pretended to be a news administrator but actually wasn't, when
>some people were insisting that I be given my own ua.* group but weren't
>able to do anything about it.
--
Posts as [e-mail] (Sean P. Ryan).

OMEGA.MAN :
From rec.arts.comics.misc.
Contrib. post:
 Doesn't crosspost. Also doesn't post much, but when he _does_ post you
tend to see 50+ articles all at once, with subjects all in caps. Most of
the time, he follows up to long-since-dead threads. He's famous for
threatening to physically maim a well-respected RACM member, and commonly
follows up to articles from that member by posting insults. At this point
in time, he mostly gets ignored by the folks on RACM.
--

Richard Sexton:
Contrib. post:
 So how could you forget Richard Sexton, the guy who created sci.aquaria,
rec.aquaria and alt.aquaria?
--
 The Net is full of nasty group creation fights.  I was hoping this
wouldn't turn into one.  Bear with me, it has applicability to this
fracas, while I reminisce about one of my favorites: the aquarium
reorg about 5 years ago [1989]. In the beginning there was only alt.aquaria.
Some sites didn't (and still don't) carry the alt hierarchy and the
group was up to some 40 postings a day, so it was felt that it should
be placed under a more mainstream hierarchy.
 To make a long, bitter story short, 99% of the folks thought
rec.aquaria was a good idea but there was this one guy in particular
who just couldn't abide the thought that his endeavor was a mere
recreational hobby; no, his was a scientific persuit of Truth and only
sci.aquaria would suffice.  When his vote was shot down a jillion to
one against (he never resorted to vote stacking) he still created his
pet group because, after all, anybody can do so.
 Thus, three aquarium groups exist today.  Alt never dried up the way
it was supposed to and carries about half the ~100 aquarium
postings/day, rec carries the other half.  Some people broadcast their
postings to both alt and rec and occasionally even to sci as well but
the amount of original traffic on sci is, oh, 2 postings a week.
--
[Sexton says:] I dropped off the net 3 years ago after being on for about 4
years and I noticed it was slanted very much in favour of recent events
and a lot of what happened "in my day" has been forgotten already.
 Anyway, I've updated (corrected) a few entries. Use them if you want,
ignore them if you must, do what you will.
 If you have any questions about any of the older ones I have a pretty
good memory about that period.
 I can't believe Peter "duh" Silva is one of the "good" guys. Amazing. Oh
well..
[and adds to/updates the above post - after all, he should know:]
 Noticing that there was no newsgroup for tropical fish wackos, Sexton
posted to rec.pets and got 2 responses in 6 months (one of which was "get
those fish out of here") and so proposed a newsgroup for aquaria. The
vote failed by a 10% margin, so Bob Webber (see above) created alt.aquaria.
Some sites didn't (and still don't) carry the alt hierarchy and the group
was up to some 40 postings a day, but was not being propagated to Europe
where the *really good stuff* in aquaria was going on.
 At around this time a vote for sci.military was held by Bill Thacker and
passed, and Sexton concluded that if killing people was a science then so was
keeping tropical fish; besides, sci.aquaria would make it to Europe. He
followed the newsgroup creation guidelines, but they were unfortunately
broken, as the guidelines said a discussion had to be held for two weeks,
and it was, and the popular opinion was a zillion to 6 against. However it
turned out the discussion phase was non-binding, so he went ahead and called
the vote. Sexton had a lot of friends and they forged more yes votes than the
detractors forged no votes. Since all the forgers were members of the
old backbone cabal, the forgeries were rather skillfully done and never
detected [until now, that is...].
 Seen by many as a debacle, and as a testament to the integrity of Gene
Spafford (q.v.) (who took care of these things at the time) the group was
created, although many sites either refused to honor the newgroup or aliased
it to one of the other *.aquaria groups. Since the vote was at the time the
largest in the history of usenet (938 to 727 in favour) the newsgroup
creation rules were changed and the 2/3 majority rule was added, among others.
[...]
 This developed into a reputation for initiating newsgroups that
nobody thought were a good idea, but somehow managed to pass a vote
anyway, such as comp.fonts and alt.restaurants (although a vote was not
strictly required in alt, it was almost universally though of as a bad
idea; it was created anyway, and later made into a rec group).
 Sexton created alt.prose, and was disgusted when he found out it was
for poetry, not prostitutes.
 Did not invent, but popularized, the practice of cross-posting to
misc.test, to see if people were awake. They generally weren't.
 Was also responsible, rather indirectly, for all the alt.sex groups. In
1988, Sexton was showing Ralph Freidenberger how to post to usenet, as
all Ralph knew how to do was follow-up posting. Sexton posted the
message "I propose the newsfroup rec.fucking" to talk.bizarre with
a local distribution. It should have stayed on the machine gryphon.com,
but like so many of Sexton's posts there was a spelling error [I've cleaned
those up here, says the FAQ-person]. Unfortunately the spelling error was in
the "Distribution: local" header line, so the posting was sent out all over
the world. This resulted in two things happening: first, other people thought
rec.fucking would be a really good newsgroup, although the name should
probably be changed to rec.sex, and second, the word "newsfroup" became part
of the UseNet vernacular for apparently no good reason. The vote for
rec.sex passed, but it was one of those groups (like
comp.protocols.tcp-ip.eniac, which was proposed by Bob Webber as a
"mainstream" talk.bizarre to accomodate Roger Carasso when he got his first
account removed by UCLA) that the backbone refused to carry it. Brian Reid
thus created alt.sex, and since there already was an alt.drugs, Reid also
created alt.rock-n-roll to complete the triumvirate.
 Sexton also contributed the phrase *plonk* to the UseNet vernacular,
as the sound of a person's name being dropped into his killfile.
 He used to post as [e-mail] until gryphon and its owner
died in 1990. He then surfaced for a while as [e-mail] (Ned Phoboe)
and later was traded by the Los Angeles Cabal in a second round draft
choice, along with Bob Webber of New Jersey, to Canada in exchange
for Brad Templeton of Waterloo, who is now in California, in 1990.
--
He can be reached these days at [e-mail] (Richard Sexton).

Frank Schaffer:
Contrib. post:
 A local loon is Frank Schaffer. Also known as Promillo. Among his merits
are a .sig displaying an Iron Cross and a firing tank. He posts only to
German newsgroups, such as de.soc.politik, de.soc verkehr (about traffic),
and soc.culture german. His views are that of the reactionary right with
special contempt for anyone who could impose a speed limit on an autobahn.
He is also noted for using the proof by news headlines. Interestingly,
examining the whole message ends up supporting the view of the other side.
Never follows up to debunking, of course.
 His views and the story of his life have an uncanny resemblance to those
of a fictional character, "Diederich Hessling", in a novel by Heinrich Mann.
--
Posts from [e-mail] .

Rich Holmes (mcmxciibo):
 One of the Inner Circle on alt.fan.warlord; notable for his derivative-Kibo
middle name and for his rapier wit, as well as for being able to stuff into
a 4x80 .sig *all* of the following common Blechy .Sig Fillers Used By The
Clueless (as a response, apparently, to Neil "YoYo" Pawson's saying it
couldn't
be done): one badly-drawn ASCII Bart simpson, a sword, a Kibo number, the
Vicki Robinson .sig virus, a badly-drawn ASCII map of Australia (with Perth
helpfully indicated), an ASCII bicyclist, a rose, an Amiga check, a fnord,
a Rush quote, an obscure quote, lots of asterisks, no less than *10* borders,
and what appears to be a WordPerfect reference. Unfortunately, this leaves no
room for Captain Whitespace to visit... uses it pretty much solely on
alt.fan.warlord (q.v.) though. Also legendary for being two or three of the
most frequent posters to the Morris Dance mailing list, under various
addresses
(which led to a rumor that *everyone* there was him, and a "not Rich Holmes"
.sig virus). Posts as [e-mail] (Rich 'mcmxciibo' Holmes); look
for it in the headers 'cuz there might be no room for it in the .sig ...

Even Steven on alt.sex.bondage.
Contrib. post:
 Even Steven has been posting lengthy arguments to a.s.b to the effect that
all dominance/submission relationships are BAD and WRONG.  He has mangled
Noam Chomsky's concept of "Manufacturing Consent" (which argues that since
Americans get skewed information on world events from the mass media, their
'consent' to the policies of their government is questionable) to mean that
anyone's consent to any act may have been manufactured; specifically, that
submissives consent to enter dom/sub relationships can never be 'genuine'.
Submissives have argued with him at length, saying that they have freely
chosen to live the lives they lead, to no avail.
--
 Rants on the subject; not *immediately* obvious that something's a bit off,
but observation over time leads one to this conclusion, I'm told. A minifaq
is available. Posts as [e-mail] (Even Steven).

Charles Newman (alt.fan.nicole.bobeck is *my* group, *miiiiine*!):
 Infests rec.skate; newgroups badly named alt groups for figure skaters
and cancels people's posts in "his" groups, notably the FAQ on killfiles
posted to rec.skate by [e-mail] . A John Palmer (q.v.) wannabe.
Responsible for the life and death of alt.fan.cristi.yamaguchi(i) ...
Also under the impression that a) one *must* be "root" in order to forge
mail or news on a Unix system and b) there is a "delgroup" command that's
applicable to Usenet...
Posts as [e-mail] (Charles Newman) [at present].

Bob Rahe ("Threat to USEnet"):
Contrib. post:
 One person I think deserves a mention in a list of net.loons is Mr. Bob
Rahe. He popped up on alt.fan.dan-quayle over last summer ['93], with a sig
file that read 'Save whales and kill babies? Don't Liberals just kill
you', and every one of his posts went on about how abortion was horrible,
even if the subject had only been mentioned in passing.
 This prompted a memorable post from his sysadmin, with the subject: line
reading 'Bob Rahe - Threat to USEnet'. The sysadmin said that every
subject he posted about in his home network ended up in a flamewar over
abortion. The sysadmin concluded that Bob Rahe had a psychological need
to go on and on about it, and was therefore deserving of protective
status under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
--

Andrew Beckwith (Net.canary to the uranium mine that is UseNet):
 Nominated for talk.bizarre's Mr. Clay Pigeon 1994; a user of erratic
spacing   and, inappropriate  comma's and   apostrophes. Quote:
--
  For your information, I Andrew Beckwith, live in Pittsburgh, Pa. My  parents
live near Stanford  University, Califorina.
   Nice try. Merey off  by almost 3000 miles.
    Try again/
                              Andrew Beckwith
--
 It's a bit difficult to follow his logic at times, but it does seem to
usually
be present. Andrew's sysadmin appears to be fully Clued about him (and says
not to be concerned if he threatens to have your net.access revoked...) - and
has had to tell Andrew to please not complain about people *not* sending him
harrassing email... Is *very* amusing if you follow along for a while, as much
for the responses he draws as for his posts. May be seen on alt.flame,
talk.bizarre, alt.usenet.kooks, etc. A Jpeg is available from ftp.netcom.com :
/pub/martinh (The Official Alt.FLame FTP and JPEG archive site). The
expression "Andrew Beckwith pities you" has come into vogue on certain
newsgroups to mean someone is *really* out of it (enough so to be noticed by
Andrew, you see)... Managed to secure Kook-of-the-Month for May, 1994, awarded
by alt.usenet.kooks (*the* group to lurk in if you're interested in the
inexplicable side of Usenet posting...). Posts as "Andrew W. Beckwith"
<[e-mail]>.

Joachim Martillo Ajami (multiple middle names elided):
Contrib. post:
 who, until approximately [1992], polluted most
soc.culture.* groups with diatribes as to (pick the culture)'s primitiveness
and need for recolonization by the enlighted West.
--
>Does anyone remember Juan Carlo Santos Martillo Ajami? (I may have got
>the name slightly wrong) Is he still around?
 Oh, I _do_ remember Martillo. He occasionally posts to talk.politics.mideast,
but he seems to've (thankfully) ceased infesting the soc.culture newsgroups
he used to turn up at.
> About 3 years ago he
>used to post on various politics groups: usually deliberately
>inflammatory stuff like "Time to Suspend and Dismantle India".  Basic
>view-point seemed to be a very right wing "America can do nothing wrong".
 At one time, Mark Crispin (who seems to've disappeared from the net entirely)
referred to him as a LaRouchie, although I'm not sure how that connects to
Martillo's "the Third World is inhabited by savages and colonialism is good
for them" party line, which is something he seems to repeat just about every
time he posts.
>When I once took him to task for a particularly outrageous
>round of this I got a barely-coherent e-mail accusing me of favouring
>Stalinism and baby-killing.
 You actually got _Email_ from him? Hmmm. He never bothered mailing me after I
flamed him on a few occasions...
>The "Ajami" part of the name appeared _ex_nihilo_ one day after he
>claimed to have had a Moslem great-uncle in Palestine who was murdered
>for collaborating with the Jews (or something like that).  He also showed
>up on soc.religion.islam, but I don't know what his religious views are.
 Presumably orthodox Loonyism. He seems the type. >:)
--
> Does anyone remember Juan Carlo Santos Martillo Ajami? (I may have got
> the name slightly wrong)
He used lots of variants, starting as Joachim Martillo and later spelling
his first name Yakim or Yehoyaqim as the fancy took him and adding the Ajami.
> Is he still around? [...]  Basic viewpoint seemed to be a very right wing
> "America can do nothing wrong". [...]
Haven't heard from him in a while.  He apparently got an article published
in a prestigious neo-conservative magazine (Commentary?), which says a lot
about their editorial standards...
> I don't know what his religious views are.
He is or was an atheist Sephardic Jew.  He mildly despised religious Jews
and Christians and regarded Muslims as subhuman vermin.
--

Mark "We must colonize Venus right NOW!" Sobolewski:
Contrib. post:
 from sci.space (where I only lurked, never posted) who is said to frequent
groups such as alt.feminism and soc.men, spouting non-stop that men have it
a lot worse than women in this society and how women is always trying to
exploit him;
--
 mark's most charming habit in soc.women and alt.feminism
is his creative definition of the word "feminist."  if
you try to argue with him by pointing out that you are a
feminist and you don't do [whatever thing he's accusing
feminists of this week], he simply claims that you're NOT
a feminist.
 at one point, he claimed that his definition of a feminist
was "a woman who makes more than $20K/year."  inexplicable.
 but i don't think he really qualifies as a net.loon.  he's
more of a net.butthead.
--
 Maybe I'm reading the wrong newsgroups, but Sobolewski seems to have
disappeared...
--

Kevin Darcy (Kibbles):
Contrib. post:
 who seem to draw fire from all flamers alike on any group (when I last
dipped into soc.men, I saw a lengthy flamewar with him committed firmly
on some side) but actually have a measure of intelligence (at least as of
1991, when I last posted actively in any group except rec.games.*);
--
 of course, these days in t.a, Darcy is just a minor irritation
compared to the all-out attempt to see how many variations of the same
one-note song Keegan (q.v.) can devise and post. It's almost enough to make me
wish Ralph Taite would come back...
--
 Keven Darcey AKA "Kibbles" (ask Ted Frank for details...)
Loon 2nd Class, with dog food cluster.
--
 Seen most recently on alt.config arguing *passionately* against the creation
of a moderated alt.dads-rights (apparently feeling that *he'd* not be allowed
to post there, so it was Blatantly Unfair).
Posts from [e-mail] (Kevin Darcy).

James Keegan:
Contrib. post:
 who must qualify as a BOT of some sort, flaming away at anything at a drop
of a hat and not necessarily at any particular doctrine or ideology-- when
I made the last-mentioned dip into soc.men a killfile for crossposts
nailed about 500 posts out of 1,000 with him in a flamefest of some
kind involving people who looks like pro-choicers from talk.abortion
(i.e. people who he was _nominally_ on the same side with).
--
 hey!  be nice to keegan!  when i told him i had the flu,
he fedexed me a box of chocolates!
--
 He's back, and is at number 6 on the #-of-articles lists... looks like he's
frequenting talk.abortion, alt.feminism, soc.men, soc.women, and
alt.abortion.inequity (and fails the 50% test, by the way: his percentages
in the news.lists postings add up to > 50%, indicating massive concentration
on only a few newsgroups), as well as alt.usenet.kooks . *Not* entertaining
to watch, as his followups tend to be endless repetitions on one basic
theme, to be one-liners, and to have "creative editing" of the followed-up
text. Has his own frequently-Tim-Pierce-rmgrouped alt.fan.* newsgroup. Posts
as
[e-mail] (James G. Keegan Jr.) or [e-mail]
(james g keegan jr).

Jim Bowery ("Are YOU of Jewish heritage?"):
 Seen in all the usual anti-semitic-suspect groups: alt.activism,
alt.conspiracy, alt.revisionism (plus talk.politics.guns for some reason). Can
be easily baited by Ted Frank. Promotes the "idea of genetic separatism":
that fine upright Nordic genes are in danger of being degraded by secular
Jewish genes and therefore the possessors of the former need to keep
themselves
away from the possessors of the latter, as near as I can make out. Talk of him
once proposing a colony on Mars, free of secular Jewish influences, has been
flying on alt.usenet.kooks; apparently also once claimed Rush Limbaugh was
part
of the Jewish media conspiracy. A sample random quote, the first one I ran
across on alt.revisionism while puttering through the newsgroups:
--
> When will our people wise up and learn from history???
 When we cease being educated and morally manipulated via media and academia
by
Jews.
 When will that happen?  When we form a society from which Jews are excluded
with extreme prejudice.
 The question the becomes, how does one avoid the definition of "extreme
prejudice" as it is used in intelligence circles:  murder.
[...]
 Our main mistakes in this New World were that we didn't include, in our
constitution, a genetic definition of citizenship and a prohabition against
imported labor (ie: slaves and migrant workers).  I would even go so far
as to put a prohabition against tourists of any kind because the key to
maintanence of the northern genetic constitution is avoidance of social
contact with those of southern genetic constition just as their key to
survival is avoidance of military or violent confrontation with those of
northern genetic constitution.
--
Posts as [e-mail] (Jim Bowery).

Rich Rosen:
Contrib. post:
 I just realized the list is also missing Rich Rosen, one of the earliest
net.legends, who back around 1986 produced so many voluminous postings
that there were rumors of rooms of people writing for him.
--
 Can someone write up something on Rich Rosen, immortalized in the
expire man page of bnews?
 BTW, does anyone know how he got there?  I recall once suggesting
using expire to delete all his articles (and getting flamed by him for
this), and many years (and a few releases) later I noticed that he was
*in* the expire man page.  Was he always there?
--
How can a Net.Legends list omit Rich Rosen?  I think he still holds the
record for amount of spontaneous, germane text in a single newsgroup
(net.philosophy).
--

Doctress ("Lovolution") Neutopia:
 Posts on The Gaia Religion and Neutopian Thought... has a scheme for
planetary
salvation involving arcologies, feminist lovolution, worship of Gaia. Can
be seen in alt.censorship, among other places.
Contrib. post:
lbsisk on BIX ([e-mail]) wrote:
: I was not being critical of your intelligence, though your thought
: processes seem irrational, but of your belief system.
To form a new religion is a new belief system which is what I have
done in my dissertation.
: I do have a question or two, though.  What is the university which
: is purportedly going to award you a doctorate, and in which field
: of study is the doctorate being awarded?  If you wouldn't mind
: posting the name of the primary person who supervised your work,
: I would like to contact him or her to ask a couple of other questions.
: Feel free to respond by email if you prefer.
The doctorate I have been awarded is from the School of Education
in future studies.  The dissertation is a work of prophecy.
I am dealing with the occult powers.  Normally, traditional institions
do not give revolutionary thinkers degrees for their occult knowledge,
but I am a rare individual.
--
{disclaimer: the following statements are, actually, true}
 I have actually met this woman !
 She provided quite a bit of entertainment at a meeting of our Graduate
Student Senate last semester. Specifically, she debated with the UMass
Chancellor, David Scott, about how his vision for the university's next
20 years was flawed because it didn't involve EcoCities or the Information
Lovolution. They were both mostly spouting hot air, which is why it was
so much fun. (Also, he did a good job of appearing to take her seriously.)
 The Future Studies Dept. apparently was cut several years ago
(that's why her doctorate is actually an Ed.D.).
My first thought was, of course:
"This just goes to show that there's no future in future studies."
--
Her thesis can be found by ftp at bertha.pyramid.com, /pub/leri/Neutopia;
those with Mosaic/WWW/Lynx access may check out http://xville.com/xville/ .
May soon have her own newsgroup, alt.society.neutopia, to talk about the
coming lovolution on. Posts as [e-mail] (Doctress
Neutopia).

Carl J Lydick:
 Frequent poster to sci.skeptic, sci.astro, talk.origins, and
alt.folklore.science; has a memorable .sig, which is about VAXen, and about
three lines too long. Is notable for a) a sometimes abrasive posting style -
he does *not* suffer fools gladly, and will mercilessly flame Velikovskianites
in particular into little manna-bearing ashes, and b) being nearly always
right
when he *does* correct someone. Watching him for a while can be fun. Currently
taking on Ted Holden (q.v.) in talk.origins ... Posts as
[e-mail] (Carl J Lydick).

Jai ("The Voice Of Mantra Corporation") Maharaj:
 Apparently posts a lot to alt.astrology, rec.food.veg, soc.culture.indian,
and sci.med.nutrition; is a Vedic astrology follower and vegetarian. Will
accuse people of "LIBEL", or of sending (non-existent) mailbombs. Posts little
VEDA extracts. Has an alt.fan.jai-maharaj newsgroup. Is currently involving
alt.culture.hawaii in his crossposts for some reason. A miniFAQ is available.
Posts as [e-mail] (Jai Maharaj) (email:
[e-mail]).

Publius:
 Apparently a fixture on alt.atheism; stands out enough from the crowd there
to be noticeable, which takes a bit of doing. May be partly responsible for
some of gate.net's reputation...
Contrib. post:
 This person has long ago passed the net.loon point and
is cruising easily through his own little net.psychosis.
This person posts under the name Publius from <[e-mail]>.
 Are there specific criteria a net.moron must meet to enter the halls of
the famous?  I, or indeed anyone over on alt.atheism, will be happy to tell
you about Publius (except maybe Publius himself).  For the record, I think
he long ago passed the Mozumder mark, and Mozumder is in the FAQ...  In
fact, ridicule of Publius became so great at one point that it primarily
brought about the creation of alt.atheism.satire, which has played host to
two stories about Publius.
--
Posts as [e-mail] (Publius).

David DeLaney ("I'm *not* everywhere, I'm *not*!"):
 A relative newbie (10/93); notable mainly for his posting volume and his
nearly-unbreakable habit of using the a.f.u ever-changing middle name. Tended
to post in quantities greater than Serdar Argic (q.v.) did, but only by
posting mainly to a vast quantity of mostly-unrelated groups; at one point
out-argued Dick Depew. Had a dense, turgid, and somewhat scatterbrained
writing style. Responsible for at least one version of the Net.Legends FAQ;
opinions on this FAQ vary, all the way from "hysterically funny..." to "A
pack of *lies*!!". Could be seen on any of several groups, including a.f.u,
rec.arts.sf.written, news.newusers.questions, soc.motss, and
alt.religion.kibology, as well as (once in a while) any of a great number
of smaller-volume groups. Claims *not* to have read all of the net, as this is
clearly impossible nowadays; known to have followed at least six or seven
high-volume groups closely, without killfiles.
 Unfortunately, the twin forces of ever-exponentially-increasing newsgroup
volume and impending joblessness forced his withdrawal from the net in August
'94. May be back someday, but probably more "someday" than "soon"...
 Posted as dbd@{martha|panacea|enigma|utkux1}.utcc.utk.edu or
[e-mail] (David [B.] DeLaney).

Honorable Mention:
 Ronald van Loon, maintainer of Motif++; quote: "I hate to jump in like this,
but it makes one wonder. What do people have against Loons ? I have been a
Loon almost all my life and I am as sane as a dodo's navel on ice." Included
for obvious reasons... Posts as [e-mail] (Ronald van Loon).

5.0  ----------------------------------------------
Also Nominated, but with little or no information:

John DiNardo: (whose voluminous multipart postings inspired a subject line
 "Part 1: Is the CIA putting acid in John Dinardo's Coffee?")

Stephen Chaney:
Contrib. post:
 Second-handly, I got the report
also from talk.abortion (after I stopped posting there) of one
Stephen Chaney, who seem to consider himself an airplane of some sort
and runs around making "whoosh" sounds (I am not sure of the details
but he is reputedly sticking to alt.fan.rush-limbaugh nowadays).
--
 He's not even there very much, now.  He retreated from there to spending his
time on IRC, and apparently is marrying (or has married, already) a student at
E. New Mexico U. he met on IRC.
--

David J. Rasmussen (thanks for not killing me, mommy!):
Contrib. post:
 Actually, if ever there was a certified net.loon in
talk.abortion, I'm surprised you missed the obvious choice:  David J. "thanks
for not killing me, mommy!" Rasmussen.  I'd vote for him, but then I may be
biased by the fact that he actually traveled all the way to Houston from
Raleigh to confront me -- and he couldn't figure out that I was normally home
asleep at the hour he showed up at the RUPD offices demanding they arrest me.
 (It made my day to be awakened by a late-afternoon phone call from an RUPD
officer asking if I knew anyone by DJR's name, and when I answered that I did,
being informed that he was on campus looking for me.  1992 May 27 -- a date to
remember, for sure.)
--

Dave Nalle:
 And there is always Dave Nalle, on the r.g.frp.* groups, who
KNOWS the True Way of Gaming.
Contrib. post:
 Ah, yes.  Nalle created and is marketting his own frp system. He is...
rather intolerant of criticism on his system, but I've never looked at
the system. In a fascinating tautology, I refuse to look at his system
because of the way he deals with posts which criticize it. A great
reminder to those who think PR is unimportant.
--

Han de Bruijn:
Contrib. post:
 Used to post to sci.math and cause a lot of heated discussions with his
"A little bit of physics would be NO idleness in mathematics" threads.
He apparently was told to stop posting by his employer, and began writing
a 'Series of Unified Numerical Analysis' (SUNA) - I didn't read them, so they
might not be loon articles, though. Unfortunately, I couldn't find his own
ftp archive, which should be in the Netherlands, and his postings of suna are
nowadays very rare.
--

Mr. Lionel Tun:
 of talk.origins and ForTun Cookie Quotes; also of uk.misc .
Posts as (apparently) [e-mail] (Lionel Tun), if this isn't a
different Lionel Tun entirely.

Kalki Dasa:
 also of talk.origins...

Jeff X. Mink (I am a false prophet): ?

Geoff Miller:
Contrib. email:
> *Who* ees dees Geoff Miller person? Data, I need more data, Captain!
 Seriously???  I saw an alt.peeves FAQ on alt.humor.b-o-u that called him
the mayor of alt.peeves... uncontested, which says something.  I first
ran across him when message #1 on alt.current-events.wtc-bombing was GM
SCREAMING that we should nuke Mecca during holy week, as retaliation.
He's supposed to have invented 'squicking'-- fucking a hole you cut in
the skull of your victim.  Let me see if I can find a sample of his art...
--

Kenneth Arndt:
apparently from talk.abortion.
Contrib. post:
 And I should point out that a couple of nights ago ABC's Nightline ran
a report on the "deadly force" branch of the anti-abortion movement.
At one point they showed a list of people who had signed a declaration
that any force necessary, including homicide, is justified against
abortionists.  Among the signatures was one Kenneth Arndt.  Remember him?
--
 The most magnificent piece of his writing I have ever read was posted
to net.motss (I _think_ it was pre-Great-Renaming), and titled "The
Monkey and the Beachball".  I would be VERY grateful to see that again, or
to know how to contact Mr. Arndt in hopes that he can provide it.
Splendid, simply, horrifically splendid....
--

Well Jesus Monroy Jr will always have a place in the global killfile
[surely "heart"?] of many readers of the comp hierarchy (especially
comp.os.*).

When I used to read uk.* (I actually live in the UK, don't be misled by the
hostname), Ken Johnson stuck out in my mind for being a pretty froody dude;
he even had an alt.fan.* group created in his honour, but then he seemed to
disappear... must have got a better job, or something.
I don't suppose regional groups qualify for the list though.
--
Posts to talk.bizarre ...

Davorin Dujomvic (sp?)

Jonathon E.D. Richmond (How many jews does it take to shut down a newsgroup):
?

Don_-_Showen:
 from sci.skeptic. Posts as Don_-_Showen@[e-mail]; the "_-_" appears
to be a cup.portal.com artifact...

George Carter:
Contrib. post:
 On that note, I would like to nominate George Carter. He has been
ranting, raving, and carry-on consistantly for quite some time now.
He has earn his own spot in the comp.sys.hp.* FAQ and probably has
more kill files with his name in it than any.
--

Herman Rubin (Modern programming languages aren't what I need): ?
Contrib. post:
 Rubin has strong feelings about all kinds of things--Bayesian probability,
the proper role of a statistical consultant, space exploration, medicine.
--

Tony Hollick ("Photon energies are quantised" & "My Doctor told me the KGB
 killed my parents"):
Posts as [e-mail]; a UK phenomenon.

 Maybe it reflects bad early reading habits, but the first newsgroups I was
aware of devoted to net personalities were not the Kibo groups.  They were
alt.rissa and alt.weemba.  You could include Rissa and Weemba, or was
their prominence not sufficient for your list?

RICHH: ?

6.0  ______________________________________________________________________
Things We Could Have Called This But Didn't:
Net.Loons FAQ
Net.Celebrities
Net.Personalities
Butterfly.Net
Net Butterflies
Net.Prophets.and.Losses (The (Un)Balance(d) Sheet)
From the Depths of the Net
Jane's Guide to Birdwatching on the Net
At Large in the Net
If You Thought AFU Was Weird...
net.30
Pick of the Litter
Catch of the Day(s)
Caught in the Net
Sounds Fishy To Me
UseLessNet
While Trolling Thru the Net One Day
Post.Holes
Anti.Matters
net.weight (Contents May Have Settled During Shipping)
Net.Infamous.Posters
UseNUTS (Dan "Which makes the rest of us UseBOLTS" Case)
net.singularities ("Isn't that where Kibo is dividing Spot by zero?"
"WAAAAAH!")
Netorious / Net.Notorious
net.pinatas
Spot the Net.Loony
Canadian Coins Explained
Infamous.net
Cranks and their Cases
High Weirdness By Email (it was already taken, unfortunately)

7.0  ________________________________
Credits: This FAQ would not have been possible without several people: Bill
vanHorne, the original "volunteer" to write it; the person who said "we should
write a FAQ about this" when the question came up for the nth time "who *was*
McElwaine, anyway, and why are you all still talking about him?"; the good
people on alt.folklore.urban and alt.folklore.computers, and elsewhere, who
contributed to the Call for Loons thread (many of whose posts are quoted here,
with credit given below); Dave DeLaney, FAQ-gatherer, who in a moment of
insanity volunteered to help Bill; people all over UseNet who critiqued
individual bits when presented; Daniel J. Karnes, who did more than *anyone*
else to popularize the FAQ; and of course, the Net.Legends themselves, without
whom none of this would have been possible (or necessary). Contributing were
(whether they know it or not): Kibo, Ted Frank, Peter Trei, Larry Wall, Jeremy
Reimer, Lewis Stiller, Joel Furr, Andrew Bulhak, Sean P. Ryan, Jack Sarfatti,
Dmitri Vulis; james dolan, Sea Wasp (Ryk E Spoor), Don Porges, Dan Case, Lee
Rudolph, Bill Sinkins, Stephen Watson, Scott H. Mullins, Paul Tomblin, RICHARD
JOHN AKIS, Bob Tinsley, Thomas C. Allard, Sean Malloy, Dik T. Winter, David
Lesher, John Gilmore, Eddie Saxe, Mike Godwin, Charlie Gibbs, Mark Eckenwiler,
Peter Lindsey, Scott Forbes, Marcelo Magnasco, Pat Hayes, Mike Swaim, Jonathan
Papai, Jason R. Heimbaugh, Mark Brader, 5150 (Ron Echeverri), Rob Jellinghaus,
Arne Adolfsen, Ariel Faigon, Matthew B. Landry, Chris Lewis, Jim Wise, Perry
Metzger, Chandra L. Morgan-Henley, Henry Robertson, The_Doge, Mark McCullough,
Iain Sinclair, Peter D. Hampe, David_Moursund, Mary Shafer, Bernd Meyer, Jason
Durbin, Robbie Westmoreland, Bill Duetschler, Jamie R. McCarthy, Barry Shein,
Steven Miale, Tom Lane, Steve Hayman, thomas a lloyd, Christopher Neufeld,
Snakes of Medusa (mathew), Thomas Jelonek, Bill Bogstad, Curt Hagenlocher,
Richard Trott, Jim Jewett, John Ockerbloom, Raphael Carter, Chris Krolczyk,
Edward C. Bennett, Richard Caley, Paul O'Brien, Jim Davis, Brendan Hassett,
Bill Irion, Timo Salmi, Joseph M. Saul, Scott Drellishak, Faisal Nameer
Jawdat,
john baez, Greg Hudson, Mike Mcnally, Ken Shirriff, Alan Jaffray, Greg Galcik,
yangboy (B.Y.), Trygve Lode, Eric Jaron Stieglitz, Bill Nelson, Joel B. Levin,
Patrick L. Humphrey, Brad Allen, Robin Chauhan, Ketil M. Malde, Ben Jackson,
Nick Szabo, Theo Mora, Matt Brown, Mitchell Porter, Brad `Squid' Shapcott,
David Boothroyd, Guy Harris, eric schwartz, moxie, Thom Grace, Bob Ingria,
Kelly Bert Manning, Patricia O Tuama, Gregory G. "Wolfe" Woodbury, Jack
Campin,
Jorn Barger, FJ!! van Wingerde, Lloyd Wood, Steven Case (?), Dave Fischer,
John
William Chambless, David Casseres, Gary L. Dare, Bruce Ediger, Gary
Lewandowski,
Ted Faber, Keith Rogers, Lewis McCarthy, Keith Lim, Alec Habig, G. L.
Sicherman, Eli Brandt, Toby Koosman, Claudio Calvelli, Thomas Koenig, David
Goldfarb, Charles D. Roten, Alexandre Pechtchanski, Mark Meyer, Stacy Prowell,
Matt McIrvin, [e-mail], and Warren Burstein of the four-legged
shin,
who claims the "It's always September" quote. If you're on this list, you
contributed or posted *something*; good luck in finding it...  if you'd rather
your *particular* here-included email contribution not appear here, even
anonymously, contact me (emailed legal threats excluded; I'm counting posts
as "fair game")...

Corrections, updates, new sightings of little-known legends, new nominations,
etc., may be posted to alt.usenet.kooks; crossposting to one of
alt.folklore.urban, alt.religion.kibology, or alt.folklore.computers would
be nice. Also note that martha.utcc.utk.edu, where dbd usually posts from, is
officially Not Involved in this, and enigma contains only *pointers* to the
info; if you wanna complain to someone, see below.

Compilation copyright (only) [e-mail] (David DeLaney); this
does not claim that individual contributors' copyrights have been transferred,
only that the compilation and original portions thereof are copyright. Please
feel free to distribute freely, charging no-one.