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Net.Legends.FAQ (Noticeable Phenomena Of Usenet) Part 1/4
       (Archivist's note:  The other three parts are appended, below.)

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 home page 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
mailbox...

 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
no one 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 moniker, "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 contributing 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 he 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 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 he 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 article
>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.  (I.e., 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 miniFAQ 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 conspiratorial 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 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''

Never mind. 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 monikers: 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 Gupta.

Contrib. post:
 Actually, the repetitious 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 who
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
quotation: "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 quotation 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 "harassed" 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 miniFAQ 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 that 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's "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's 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 pinnacle 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
killfile 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 millennia.

 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 over 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 mutated 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.




Net.Legends.FAQ (Noticeable Phenomena Of Usenet) Part 2/4

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" that 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. Perennially
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 uninitiated, 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 interesting 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 that 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.career, 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 through 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. Quotation: "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's 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 mailbox"? 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 no one 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 no one 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's 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 disappears in a puff of embarrassment.

--
>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 newsgroup [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 quotations:

- - - 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
`unmanly'. He then proceeded to define that in wonderfully circular
definitions, 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 magnanimous 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 employ
"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. Quotations:

>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 quotation:

>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 some such, 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.





Net.Legends.FAQ (Noticeable Phenomena Of Usenet) Part 3/4

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 fulfills some
Kibo-imposed condition that 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!) quotation: "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 precise 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 that 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 whom 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 '50s 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 miniFAQ 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 that are highly un-idiomatic in English
("dandruff-covered" was one of them, I think) that 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 miniFAQ 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 no one
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-handedly 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, usually 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 deceive 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-consensual rape stories on alt.sex.bondage and
then started to use the rape stories as proof that ASBers 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. Quotation: "I have been washed in the blood of the lamb and
that stain will never come off!" Unable to recognize satire at .23
millimeters. 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
university 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
that 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 killfile.  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 quotations 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.





Net.Legends.FAQ (Noticeable Phenomena Of Usenet) Part 4/4

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 salutary 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 topics
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 that 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 Ph.D 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
moniker), 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 pursuit 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 accommodate Roger Carasso
when he got his first account removed by UCLA) that the backbone refused
to carry. 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 quotation, an
obscure quotation, lots of asterisks, no fewer 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. Quotation:

--
  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 harassing 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 enlightened 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 quotation, 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 prohibition
against imported labor (i.e.: slaves and migrant workers).  I would even
go so far as to put a prohibition against tourists of any kind because
the key to maintenance of the northern genetic constitution is avoidance
of social contact with those of southern genetic constitution 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 institutions 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++; quotation: "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 marketing 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 that 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 consistently for quite some time now.  He
has earn his own spot in the comp.sys.hp.* FAQ and probably has more
killfiles 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" quotation. 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.