This Group - Is It About Go? Or For Off-Topic KGS Chat & Hate Speech Spam?

[Thomas Rohde]

Hello everybody, Admins,


I’ve joined this group to follow news from the Go community … not transcripts of KGS chat.

I assume everybody here can follow the KGS chat whenever they want (I for one can), therefore reposting those chats here is redundant, i.e. superfluous.

Also, Hal Womack’s remarks are hateful, insulting, aggressive, antisemitic, i.e. I consider them to be “hate speech”.

NOTE: This judgement comes from me who actually sympathizes _somewhat_ with Palestine, who criticizes Israel’s current government (but not generally “Jews”!)—I believe it is possible to oppose Israel’s current politics without resorting to antisemitic and fascist clichees.

Since the admins don’t seem to care about repeated reports of Hal Womack’s posts, I WOULD BE GRATEFUL if anybody could tell me—here or in private—a way to filter out Hal Womack’s posts, otherwise I will probably have to leave the list since I cannot help being annoyed every time I see them. Is there some “ignore” switch?


Thanks in advance,

Tom

[Kerry Liles]

Post by Thomas Rohde
Hello everybody, Admins,
I’ve joined this group to follow news from the Go community … not transcripts of KGS chat.
I assume everybody here can follow the KGS chat whenever they want (I for one can), therefore reposting those chats here is redundant, i.e. superfluous.
Also, Hal Womack’s remarks are hateful, insulting, aggressive, antisemitic, i.e. I consider them to be “hate speech”.
NOTE: This judgement comes from me who actually sympathizes _somewhat_ with Palestine, who criticizes Israel’s current government (but not generally “Jews”!)—I believe it is possible to oppose Israel’s current politics without resorting to antisemitic and fascist clichees.
Since the admins don’t seem to care about repeated reports of Hal Womack’s posts, I WOULD BE GRATEFUL if anybody could tell me—here or in private—a way to filter out Hal Womack’s posts, otherwise I will probably have to leave the list since I cannot help being annoyed every time I see them. Is there some “ignore” switch?
Thanks in advance,
Tom

I don't think rec.games.go is a moderated newsgroup (most public
newsgroups are not). Believe me, there are other groups with a much more
depressing signal to noise ratio and political and ethnic rants are the
new 'norm'. Blocking certain posters is usually a function of your
newsreader client. If you are using a web news reader like Google News
(or the like) then I am afraid you will have to figure that out from
their help info - I don't use it. If you post the news reader client you
do use, I am sure someone can provide specifics. One thing I have
noticed is that clients can efficiently block a given username (and
people often post under various pseudonyms to get around perceived
blocking) BUT the newsreaders are not generally dilligent enough to look
for a REPLY to a blocked poster and block the thread too - so you often
end up accidentally seeing garbage you thought you were blocking.

Unfortunately, there is not much real information in this group, but
there are some very worthwhile posts (I am thinking about Robert Jasiek
in particular...) - the presence of the usual garbage is a continuing
reminder of why unmoderated newsgroups are going the way of the dodo and
why nobody volunteers to be a moderator once they have tried their best.

[Thomas Rohde]

Thanks for all your replies!

First: the contentful posts here outweigh the spam by far (even if not always by number of characters), and the definitely make it worthwhile for me to stay here :-) Thanks for that!

And no, I’m not using a newsreader (as I used to do twenty-five years ago, though then I didn’t read this group), just using a browser (Chrome/Mac) and getting the Mail digest to make sure I don't miss something. Since there is not much traffic here and this is the only news group I’m reading, it’s okay. Should things change, I’ll probably switch to using a newsreader again.

So … I’ll just keep on reporting those spammy off-topic posts and then forgetting about them.

Cordially,
Tom in Germany

[Bill]

Post by Thomas Rohde
Since the admins don’t seem to care about repeated reports of Hal Womack’s posts, I WOULD BE GRATEFUL if anybody could tell me—here or in private—a way to filter out Hal Womack’s posts, otherwise I will probably have to leave the list since I cannot help being annoyed every time I see them. Is there some “ignore” switch?

I use an email/news client related to Mozilla. It allows me to filter
out messages such as the sort you are talking about. If you don't
subscribe to a newsgroup provider, I'm not sure what you'll be able to
do. I don't mind paying for newsgroups and I don't miss the advertising
that I don't get that way, at all.

Bill

Post by Thomas Rohde
Thanks in advance,
Tom

[Rainer Rosenthal]

I don't mind paying for newsgroups ---

Neither do I. I am happy with http://news.individual.de/
(Germany, Freie Universität Berlin, 10 EUR/year)

Cheers,
Rainer

[Mike Terry]

Post by Thomas Rohde
Hello everybody, Admins,

There are no admins - this is an unmoderated Usenet group. Although the
"purpose" of the group is to discuss Go related stuff, anyone can post
anything here and there's little that can be done to prevent it.

Perhaps your news group viewer has filtering capabilities? I can't advise
other than to say I know there are such viewers if you hunt for them. This
assumes you're not reading this through Google Groups - if you are then
you're obviously stuck with whatever interface Google provides, but be aware
the underlying Usenet group is completely independent of Google!

If you're main aim is just to find somewhere where everyone's talking about
Go rather than politics etc., then you should check out try
http://lifein19x19.com/forum/ That's where many of the regulars that used
to post here seem to have ended up.

Regards,
Mike

[Richard Mullens]

My advice is just don't read them.

I don't generally read them as they aren't interesting in my opinion.

But today I saw that some had been flagged for abuse so when (on reading them) I was asked if they were abusive I replied No.


The ignore switch is in your brain :)

[alex]

First of all, you must know that Richard Mullens does not condemn the posts of Hal Womack. It looks like Richard Mullens actually agrees with the spam messages of Hal Womack and manifestly participates in the spam effort by a passive attitude.

See also https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.games.go/7AHp45HbU0k/27ViWu4d2LIJ

I call everyone on RGG that has a Google account to systematically flag all messages from Hal Womack that are not related to Go.

Therefore I am pleased to see that RM somehow gets notified about messages being flagged, from which I deduce that the collective effort is beginning to bring fruits.

For more, see https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.games.go/7AHp45HbU0k/gtyrqcGWw5MJ and https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.games.go/4ANOPQleKb0/GVSmHDMaCwAJ

In other words, the content of Hal Womack's messages might be interesting, but on RGG this is pure abuse of a channel that is dedicated to Go. Protesting against this attitude is meant NOT to gaggle HW or disagree with his messages, but to remind that his spam is clogging (and he knows it) this channel.

Oh, by the way - Hal, before you thrash me once more as yet another puppet of Israel, I DO sympathise with the Palestinian POV, so please stop churning out your template reactions. But seen your neurotic reactions I consider you a lunatic and not accountable for your actions (so in fact I should treat you a the typical troll, but I always hope there are some grains of life and intelligence left in you). Sorry for that, but that is the logical conclusion by anyone observing your behaviour here.


the so called "alex".

Post by Richard Mullens
My advice is just don't read them.
I don't generally read them as they aren't interesting in my opinion.
But today I saw that some had been flagged for abuse so when (on reading them) I was asked if they were abusive I replied No.
The ignore switch is in your brain :)

[Richard Mullens]

Think what you like Alex.

This is what I wrote, since you draw attention to it, and I stand by it now:

"There's nothing antisemitic about Hal's posts.

Israel wants all of Palestine for itself - it steals their land for settlements, bulldozes Palestinian properties, deprives them of water, enforces a tight siege on Gaza, and when predictably, out of despair, the people of Gaza are provoked into launching a few firecrackers, the state of Israel responds with overwhelming force killing thousands of civilians including women and children.

If you cannot see that, then you must be blind."

How you can require me not to have a passive attitude is beyond me.

[alex]

Post by Richard Mullens
If you cannot see that, then you must be blind."
How you can require me not to have a passive attitude is beyond me.

Please re-read my post attentively. But I will not further reply to this part of the thread, because the point is precisely that this type of discussion does NOT belong on RGG.

[Richard Mullens]

Post by alex

Post by Richard Mullens
If you cannot see that, then you must be blind."
How you can require me not to have a passive attitude is beyond me.

Please re-read my post attentively. But I will not further reply to this part of the thread, because the point is precisely that this type of discussion does NOT belong on RGG.

I prefer that we don't have some idiot seeking to censor rgg

[alex]

Hello Tom,

See also https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.games.go/StNIcfvQZK0/ciwYFnp6EQAJ

This really should become an RGG FAQ entry - but on the other hand, this will only provide more attention to Hal...

rgds

-alex-

Post by Thomas Rohde
Hello everybody, Admins,
I’ve joined this group to follow news from the Go community … not transcripts of KGS chat.
I assume everybody here can follow the KGS chat whenever they want (I for one can), therefore reposting those chats here is redundant, i.e. superfluous.
Also, Hal Womack’s remarks are hateful, insulting, aggressive, antisemitic, i.e. I consider them to be “hate speech”.
NOTE: This judgement comes from me who actually sympathizes _somewhat_ with Palestine, who criticizes Israel’s current government (but not generally “Jews”!)—I believe it is possible to oppose Israel’s current politics without resorting to antisemitic and fascist clichees.
Since the admins don’t seem to care about repeated reports of Hal Womack’s posts, I WOULD BE GRATEFUL if anybody could tell me—here or in private—a way to filter out Hal Womack’s posts, otherwise I will probably have to leave the list since I cannot help being annoyed every time I see them. Is there some “ignore” switch?
Thanks in advance,
Tom

[Robert Jasiek]

This is an unmoderated Usenet group about the game of go. Best way to
filter is using a Usenet reader software, such as Forte Agent. This
presumes you have subscribed or registered at a Usenet provider, which
is available for EUR 0 to 10 per year.

[alex]

Post by Robert Jasiek
This is an unmoderated Usenet group about the game of go. Best way to
filter is using a Usenet reader software, such as Forte Agent. This
presumes you have subscribed or registered at a Usenet provider, which
is available for EUR 0 to 10 per year.

And for those that do use Google Groups, you can also help by doggedly continuing to flag such messages as "spam", or "Hateful or violent content" ("For example, Anti-Semitic content, racist content, or material that could result in a violent physical act.")

[Richard Mullens]

Post by alex

Post by Robert Jasiek
This is an unmoderated Usenet group about the game of go. Best way to
filter is using a Usenet reader software, such as Forte Agent. This
presumes you have subscribed or registered at a Usenet provider, which
is available for EUR 0 to 10 per year.

And for those that do use Google Groups, you can also help by doggedly continuing to flag such messages as "spam", or "Hateful or violent content" ("For example, Anti-Semitic content, racist content, or material that could result in a violent physical act.")

And with the exception of the last category I will unflag them ! Because not everybody accepts your world view. For reference I don't accept that Hal's remarks are anti-semitic, just anti the apartheid promoting, land stealing Israeli state.

[Thomas Rohde]

Post by Richard Mullens
And with the exception of the last category I will unflag them ! Because not everybody accepts your world view. For reference I don't accept that Hal's remarks are anti-semitic, just anti the apartheid promoting, land stealing Israeli state.

… this, for me, raises the question about the ownership of this group … does it go from father to son?

Also, that fact that you “don't accept« that HW’s anti-semitic remarks are anti-semitic does NOT whitewash them.

Maybe we should create another group?
One that is really dedicated to Go?
One that doesn't allow such kind of of off-topic posts?

[Robert Jasiek]

Post by Thomas Rohde
the ownership of this group

What ownership? This is usenet.

Post by Thomas Rohde
Maybe we should create another group?
One that is really dedicated to Go?

Instead of meta-discussion, post on-topic contents so as to make this
group more dedicated to go.

[Richard Mullens]

Post by Thomas Rohde

Post by Richard Mullens
And with the exception of the last category I will unflag them ! Because not everybody accepts your world view. For reference I don't accept that Hal's remarks are anti-semitic, just anti the apartheid promoting, land stealing Israeli state.

… this, for me, raises the question about the ownership of this group … does it go from father to son?
Also, that fact that you “don't accept« that HW’s anti-semitic remarks are anti-semitic does NOT whitewash them.
Maybe we should create another group?
One that is really dedicated to Go?
One that doesn't allow such kind of of off-topic posts?

Each to his or her own opinion - I see no reason that yours should prevail over others Thomas. This is an unmoderated group with freedom of speech - a precious commodity in these times. Cherish and support it - particularly in the way that Robert suggests.