Hi Jan,

Thanks for the detailed reply. If the folks in this newsgroup could just
stick to the topic of amateur astronomy, this newsgroup would be a great
place. I advocate posting using a real email address, however I personally
would never use a real email address because of all of the software bots
that crawl Usenet collecting email addressed to sell to spammers. Many years
ago, I posted to this newsgroup using a real email address and within
several months my email address was ruined with spam. I was receiving over
100 spam emails per day. I guess that it would be possible for me to use the
yahoo email "ddress guard" feature in order to generate special temporary
email addresses that I can delete at anytime if they become spam buckets. I
am aware of the trick of adding extra characters to the end of my email
address, however some of the software bots that crawl usenet sell different
variants of your email address and therefore your email address is not
really safe.

You are correct that folks seem to defend the trolls and that is exactly
what perpetuates the problem. For example, there always been an ongoing
flame war between the liberals and the conservatives that gets rekindled
several times a month. The problem is that regular contributing members of
this group get involved in these off-topic discussions and sometimes
perpetuate them until they become flame-wars. In a moderated newsgroup,
off-topic posts will cause them to get banned from the newsgroup by a
moderator and therefore they will not be tempted to reply and perpetuate
off-topic posts. Why do some folks feel that it is necessary to challenge
the political alliance of other members of this group? If everyone could
just stick to the topic of amateur astronomy, this would be an excellent
forum

Regards,

-mij


"Jan Owen" wrote in message
news:R7fbe.31274$lv1.16178@fed1read06...
I like the real names and real e-mail address part, and have said so over
time. It SHOULD be a requirement, with NO exceptions. If you're not real
and directly accountable and traceable, you are banned.

But I DO like SAA where it is. I just wish more folks would exercise
common sense in dealing with the trolls and ego trippers.

Ignore them, or killfile them, but DON'T respond to them, because EVERY
time you do, YOU are encouraging them to do more of the same.

I've certainly been guilty of this myself.

But what I find interesting, is when you point out that someone is a troll
that should be avoided, there are ALWAYS folks who will defend them on
SOME pretext (Oh, he owns a telescope AND an observatory, so even though
he is a total jerk, and off topic, or on an anti American/anti
Democrat/anti Republican/anti anything you can think of rant, I still find
him intellectually stimulating, so even though he almost NEVER abides by
the SAA charter, I still think we should make an exception in his/her/it's
case). And as long as this goes on, there will never be any real control
exercised over these folks, and SAA will continue to be a garbage dump...

--
Jan Owen

To reach me directly, remove the Z, if one appears in my e-mail address...
Latitude: 33.662
Longitude: -112.3272

"Mij Adyaw" wrote in message
news:eWebe.82300$A31.9856@fed1read03...
I would like to respectfully ask why so many of you tolerate this
newsgroup.
It seems to be full of trolls and other types of folks that get their
jollies by antagonizing other members of the group. There are some very
knowledgeable members of this group and I have learned much from being a
member of this group. Year after year the problems in this newsgroup
worsen.
That is just the nature of Usenet and it will only get worse with time.
Have you ever considered moving this forum (essentially all of the good
folks in this forum) to another location such as groups on Astromart or
some
other location where folks will have to post using their real names and
real
email addresses? It seems that this solution would eliminate all of the
trolls and other annoyances and we could have astronomy discussions
without
all of the flame wars. It seems that if a new home could be found, the
group
could be vacated rather quickly.

Regards,

-mij