D&D - Frothing & Foaming

[bobquasit]

I've been having a pretty pleasant conversation with people in the rec.games.frp.dnd group. Inevitably (it is Usenet, after all) some cranky guy showed up to rain flame and fury on me for not being as knowledgeable as he is.

I'm way too old to worry about flame wars, and I really don't think they're worth the time & bother, but I couldn't resist making a reply; I think it was pretty mild, but made the point.

You might find it amusing.

Comments

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

It's USENET... things don't change. That's one of the many reasons I have ceased to use the newsgroups at all (it was too much trouble to set them up again on my new computer, and I'd only been reading a dozen of them when the old machine was failing).

Actually that's one of my nasty secrets : I don't do newsgroups anymore, and I'm on only a very small number of mailing lists. I decided to let LJ replace those niches in my internet usage.

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

Do you feel that it's an adequate replacement? I suppose you must, or you wouldn't have done it.

I don't do Usenet much myself. Well, I read it (for laughs), but I don't post often. There's the occasional (rare) announcement for my RuneQuest site, of course, but that's about it.

You know, I'd be very interested in a study of the pathology of usenet, if that's the right word for it. Someone must have done some research into why there's always one or more flaming cranks on each newsgroup.

In this case, though, I must say that I got some quite useful advice from other people on the group. Ultimately I wasn't able to make a different choice, unfortunately, but that's because the D&D system is too goddamned inflexible and limited. Oh well.

I imagine that 4.0 might be an improvement. If they continue to move into skill-based mechanics, the system for crossing classes is due for improvement.

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

Sorry but for me, it's still D&D and will forever be an inferior product with a bad history for screwing authors and gamers and over marketing materials that fail to be worth my time and effort.

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

As for Usenet, yes LJ certainly is a good replacment for the most part. Yes, it still has the occasional troll or annoyance, but they are less frequent, and the spam is not nearly as bad as the spam on Usenet or in my email.

Actually the spam is a big issue when it comes to me and email. My ISP has filters, and catches 300-500 pieces a day, my own filters catch and destroy another 50-100 and my Norton's catches another 20-30 a day, and I still have several dozen spam emails daily.

My spam via LJ has been on average about 2 or 3 messages a month, usually from robot attachment posts that get screened out by me and never seen by my readers.

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

No argument from me on that point! It's a clearly inferior system. But for me it's Hobson's Choice.

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

Wow. Do you mind if I ask what spam filters you're using? They seem to be a lot less efficient then mine. Or perhaps you're deliberately tilting them in order to avoid false positives?

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

My ISP, Earthlink, has its own spam features, and I use their medium setting (under their highest setting I would ONLY receive email from folks I put in my address book, which is not good for me and my needs).

My own filters are one's I built up over time using Pegasus Mail, the mail program I use. They've been building lists of addresses and subjects for about 5 years now to get them this effective.

For Nortons I've got the full Norton's Internet Security Packlage running.

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

Oh I also use Ad-Aware, and Spybot search & destroy, to deal with the various popups and spy programs.