Soap box to stand on or toilet bowl in bad need of a flush, usenet news groups are often a place where people exchange ideas, bicker, fight, and flame on the Net. There are literally thousands of conversations (and shouting matches) transacting on the newsgroups every minute. In addition to all this noise is an endless supply of technical information and bug reports being passed around the world. Recently, this editor spent some time engaging in some discussions are these are my observations:
1) No matter what you say, you'll probably get the blunt end of an earlier conversation that you had nothing to do with. Suppose, for example, you post a message on a women's issues newsgroup saying that you feel the government does not do enough to support women. Next thing you know, you are bombarded with these highly negative, sometimes downright hostile reactions, saying that you are dead wrong, end of sentence, no further discussion. 'Whoa,' you say, 'I didn't think it was that big of a deal.' Well, guess what, it wasn't that big of a deal - but what you didn't know was that a month ago someone else started a similar discussion which quickly degenerated into a flame war that everyone is still licking wounds from. As a result, you innocently revived the discussion only to have the survivors of the last conversation trample you to death to make sure that the past does not repeat itself. It's nothing personal really, welcome to the politics of usenet.
2) Newsgroups are wonderful kiosks of information to be taken with a grain of salt. Usenet contains many technical discussion groups which can provide an enormous amount of information regarding all kinds of stuff. They are especially good sources of bug reports for popular software, especially expensive commercial software (like Photoshop) that people want to make to most of. If you have a question about something not already covered by a discussion, simply post it, request to be emailed answers, and, chances are, within 48 hours you will receive several responses (the more technical the question, the fewer the responses). While this can be very handy, make sure to compare the responses, after all, you really have no idea who is giving you information and what their credentials are. You may be getting advice about formatting your hard drive from a twelve year old who is only guessing. Hmmm. . .
3) Don't write angry! You may read something that someone wrote that irks you so much that you feel like unplugging your modem and hollering down the phone line in the hope that everyone on the Net will hear you. If you get angry (and I can promise you that someone will say something sooner or later that truly angers you), don't respond with anger. Why? It's simple, people throughout the world will read what you wrote and think that you are just as bad as the person you're responding to. Also, since usenet is global, any comment even the slightest bit prejudicial WILL BE PICKED UP ON AND RESPONDED TO. If you, for example, make a statement about, say, beer drinkers, you will get responses from people saying thing like, 'I doon.t liek waht yu rote about beerr drinkerz!!!!' (Just kidding!!) But you get the point. Be very careful about what you say and try to maintain a level head when writing.
Follow these three basic observations and it will, I hope, make the politics of the usenet more understandable and tolerable. I, myself, didn;t realize these subtle politics and wound up getting mildly offended on several instances. Usenet is one of the oldest and, in many ways, most powerful feature of the Internet. Use it well and it can truly benefit you in many ways. Abuse it, many people do, and you will be nothing but a target for flame-wars.
