The Me-Tooer
Define themselves by agreeing to postings. Whatever it is, they want a
copy too, or it's happened to them. They are the yes-men of the
newsgroup, agreeing enthusiastically with other people. Deprived of
something to agree with, they simply lurk. They were probably the kids
who were last to be picked for a team during games lessons and they just
want to be liked.
Style: Me too!
The Agony Auntie
Always the first to offer advice on relationship problems, technical
problems, pop psychology and tropical fish breeding. Agony Auntie,
Mother Hen and Technical Advisor to the rest of the newsgroup whether
they want it or not. Just wants to help people solve their own problems
and always has a wealth of anecdotes, book-knowledge and -more rarely -
actual experience to draw on. A basic pain-in-the-butt know it all.
Style: A had a friend who went through much the same thing... One thing
you might try is . According to <name-drop> the best solution is to ..
The Charter Quoter
They are frustrated law enforcement officers (probably had their
application for the police force rejected because of flat feet or bad
eyesight) who try to make up for that real-life frustration by laying
down the law on the newsgroup (where no-one can see their flat feet or
their squint). They will quote the charter/acceptable usage policy (AUP)
at every infraction, however minor e.g. missing full-stop at end of
sentence, top-quoting vs bottom-quoting, too much or too little
whitespace between quote and reply. Whatever it is, they'll find a
reason to quote you paragraph X, subsection Y, clause Z .
Style: You have contravened the charter. Read the AUP!
The Style Expert
Never contributes worthwhile material or comments, but will provide
critique on other contributors' style. In real life they probably wear
nylon shirts and beige trousers. In their not so humble opinions, they
are the only ones who practice good style and they make no allowances
for other people have other preferences.
Style: Please quote properly! You haven't quoted properly, again! Wow,
I've never seen such a brilliant example of bad quoting. Please set your
line-wrap to 77 characters as 78 characters doesn't work on <antique
newsreader software>.
The Flame Thrower
It doesn't matter what the topic is, the flame thrower will find a
reason to take issue with it. Often the Flame Thrower will have a grudge
against another newsgroup participant and will post negative responses
to everything the person posts, whether or not the Flame Thrower has a
genuine opinion on the topic. The Flame Thrower is the newsgroup
equivalent of a playground bully and often inhabits the killfiles of
other newsgroup subscribers. Best ignored or killfiled as they don't
actually notice that no-one takes any notice of them.
Style: Depends on what he's flaming at, but uncomplimentary and can
include recommendations that the original poster commit suicide or find
another newsgroup to play on or isn't entitled to have an opinion at
all.
The Flamewar Starter
Insidious little beasts who spout marginally controversial views,
graduating to more extreme comments as more and more people begin to
take sides. Unlike the Flame Thrower, they don't like being ignored.
Their ambition in life is to start a flamewar as great as the great
"Pro/Anti-something-or-other debate" of 1997, which is still rumbling
away on five or six separate newsgroups and spawned a host of Pro and
Anti websites to boot. Often starts up by selectively quoting from other
posts or from a recent news story. Then they sit back and watch the war
begin, occasionally posting a little more flamewar fuel when the
argument seems to be dying down. Sophisticated Flamewar Starters use
anonymous remailers, crosspost to several groups and use subjects such
as "Smoking Kills - Are Cats Lesbian?".
Style: Personally I don't see what the anti-cruelty bleeding-heart
liberals are going on about, I don't find anything wrong with
bear-baiting and cockfighting.
The Troll
The Troll exists purely to post controversial items and then sit back
and watch the fun. The more people who 'bite' the bait the better. A
full-blown flame-war across multiple newsgroups is better. Unlike the
Flamewar Starter, trolls rarely join in. They just like winding people
up and seeing how many people swallow the bait hook, line and sinker.
There's a saying on newsgroups: YAATAICM5P "You Are A Troll And I Claim
My Five Pounds" to challenge someone who is obviously trolling the
group. A good troll builds up to things. A good troll lurks to see what
topics rattle people's cages.
Style (subtle): Help, my ex-girlfriend keeps on phoning me to say she
still wants to be friends - what should I do? followed a week later by
Help, my ex-girlfriend keeps on phoning me to tell me she hates me -
what do I do? By about the third message people realise it's either a
troll or an incredibly thick person.
Style (blatant): I read a recent report which proves that women are more
stupid than men because they've got less wrinkles in their brain.
The Cross-Poster
The Cross-Poster is a subscriber to the grand unifying theory of
everything and wants to involve as many newsgroups as possible on his
chosen subject. Hence home computer users will find themselves debating
cat-ownership with cookery enthusiasts, sci-fi fans and naval munitions
experts with the messages cluttering up all of the newsgroups involved.
Some Cross-posters are Trolls or Flamewar Starters; others just want to
see how many newsgroups they can cross-link before folks get tired of it
all - it's a big experiment in communications with minimal malice
involved.
Style: Cat-Owning Military Software Engineer wants Man-Friendly Recipe
with Cat/Sci-Fi Theme (sent to newsgroups for cats, cookery, software,
military and anywhere else it can vaguely be linked to)
The Cuttings Service
Doesn't post own opinions - just news cuttings or humour or other
articles he picked up elsewhere on the web. Thinks he is providing a
valuable service to the group and doesn't notice that no-one responds to
his postings. Not the same as the subscriber who posts a relevant
cutting or URL in response to a request for information or as relevant
information in an ongoing thread.
Style: I found this article about the migration pattern of the greater
striated warbling toad on a news site; thought it might interest a few
people here.
The Advertiser
The newsgroups are just a big noticeboard for advertising everything
from spare parts for 1989 VW Polo through to "Girlfriend Needed!". He
even posts to newsgroups which ban adverts and then posts a "whoops
sorry wrong group" message. Doesn't contribute to a thread unless he can
add ". and BTW, I have some of those that I'm trying to sell - anyone
interested?" or ".I'm looking for a few of those, anyone care to sell?"
Style: Newspaper small lineage advertisement
The Knee-Jerk Reactionary
The Knee-Jerk Reactionary doesn't actually have time to properly read
what other people write. He just sees certain keywords and starts
flaming. Whatever your view, he can disagree with it violently, often
for the sake of having something to fly off the handle about. His
responses are so Pavlovian that others can elicit a knee-jerk reaction
by using known keywords or topics e.g. capital punishment, sending
anyone of a different colour "back home" and "women should know their
place and be grateful to be kept in it". It would greatly help the
Knee-Jerk reactionary if people didn't post messages that can't be
answered by knee-jerk reactions, and at no time should they post
messages that contain humour without attaching a smiley.
Style: Pavlovian and easy to flamebait, the operative word is "jerk".
The Prolific Poster
This user often falls into one of the other categories - most usually a
Prolific Looney or a Prolific Knee-Jerk Reactionary. Users are reminded
that he is unable to take the time to fully understand the posts he
reads due to the pressures imposed by his wish to be the most prolific
poster each week. If he had to actually think about what he read and
post a considered reply this would greatly increase the time he had to
spend on each message, thus lowering his total. Each week he strives for
a new personal best and aims to contribute as many postings
single-handedly as everyone else's postings added together. Rather than
present a considered response, he aims to batter his opponents into
submission through sheer volume.
Style: Has an opinion on anything and everything, regardless of any
knowledge on the topic - never mind the quality, feel the volume!
The Looney
The true Looney uses newsgroups to have fun. His replies bear little
relation to whatever he was replying to or even to real life. They are
the newsgroup equivalent of sneezing powder - irritating but rarely
malicious. Even he doesn't believe the content of what he is posting. A
Looney may exhibit some sort of obsession. The answer to "What Pentium
processor do I need" is "A Penguin!" to which other resident Looneys
jump in with "ITYM crow!". Looneys may go through phases when they adopt
an alternate persona.
Style: "The world is rotated by a ghost called Gilbert." "ITYM Boris the
turnip who used to be Gilbert's best friend until Gilbert tried to roast
him." "I think you'll find that Boris was a Penguin!"
The Foaming Loon
Not to be confused with the amiable Looney, the Foaming Loon inhabits an
alternate reality and is hence "differently clued" than the rest of us.
Foaming Loons start with a bizarre theory and spout "facts" which have
no basis in this reality then berate others for their ignorance. For
other Foaming Loons, it (whatever "it" is) is a conspiracy or cover-up,
but they know the truth. When it gets hard to tell the difference
between a Troll and a Loon, remember this - the Loon actually believes
what he is writing. If you see the call "Pass me the Number 3
Loon-Mallet" or "Here, borrow my Clue-Stick", you know there's a Loon on
the loose ....
Style: "The Government maintains a fleet of battle-ready versions of
Concorde armed with Cruise Missiles." " It's easy to put stealth
technology on a Vulcan flying below radar altitude" (in spite of the
Vulcan being large enough to cause an eclipse of the sun and loud enough
to burst eardrums) ...and then threatening respondents with a slander
case when they put him right!
The Hijacker and The Stalker
The Hijacker takes over existing threads and un-subtly diverts them to
his own pet topic. Do not expect a Hijacker to change the subject line.
If you find yourself suddenly discussing whisky in a thread on "land
valuation tax", you may have been Hijacked. There may be no link between
the original topic and the Hijacker's topic except for being written in
the same alphabet. Close kin to the Hijacker, the Stalker simply aims to
mention his pet topic in every thread he posts to, without subverting
the thread. Though he may end up subverting the thread, his real aim is
to see how many times he can mention his obsession in general
conversation.
Hijacker Style: "So-and-so used the word 'The'. I take this thread
hostage to ask which song contains the lyrics 'Nearer my God to Thee'?"
Stalker Style: "X was writing about an operation on his knees, knees
sounds a little like cheese and I had a particularly nice piece of
Cheddar last night." "I was thinking about this last night while
watching Star Trek; it was the episode where Janeway and Chakotay .."
The Old Grudge Holder
The Old Grudge Holder stores posts to use in evidence against people two
years later or looks them up on Google Groups (Deja News) so he can
score points off of them. Life on the newsgroup is one long grudge match
for him. When a well-worn argument comes up, he sends transcripts of the
post saying "Back in 1997, this is what you wrote to the group...." With
his near-perfect recall of past exchanges, a skilled Old Grudge Holder
waits for world events to overtake matters and reprints a 10 year old
post saying "I bet you feel silly now!" He will bide his time - be it
months or years - to prove someone wrong and will track them down across
newsgroups to do so.
Style: " I recall this debate from 1996 when you yourself claimed that
....... " "That is the complete opposite to what you said in 1992"
The Irked IRCer
A malign newbie on the group, the Irked IRCer announces his arrival with
claims that he has been slighted on an IRC channel by a newsgroup
regular. The grievance, real or fictitious, is aired in front of a new
audience resulting in sulks, mud-slinging and schism as accuser and
accused slug it out. The Irked IRCer often brings along a bunch of IRC
friends or sock puppets as moral support. He aims to embarrass his
adversary in public and isolate him from his former usenet friends.
Irked IRCers tend to be paranoid, obsessive and downright disturbed ...
or trolls.
Style: "So-and-so is untrustworthy and revealed my private details on
IRC!" "So-and-so deliberately humiliated me on IRC" "If you wonder why
such-and-such chat-room is closed, you can blame so-and-so from this
newsgroup."
This list is not exhaustive!!
ADDITIONS TO THE GUIDE TO THE VARIOUS SPECIES OF NEWSGROUP USER
(Sarah Hartwell)
The following species of newsgroup user have been communicated to me.
Contributors include Mike Moore (Verbatim Quoting man, Kaptain
Kontext-Away), Doug Smith (Cloo Pigeon), Damian M (Cloo-Less New-Bee).
The Pop-Up Poster
The Pop-Up Poster wanders aimlessly around Google Groups looking for an
interesting thread, pops up and posts a few times to the thread and then
wanders off to pop-up elsewhere. An enigmatic Usenet nomad, his
contributions range from tangentially relevant through to divine
enlightenment. The ideal Pop-Up Poster is civil, polite and
well-informed. Unlike the URL-dropper (a sub-species of the
Pop-Up-Poster) he isn't there to simply advertise himself. He just likes
to join in a discussion and then move on, like a guest at a cocktail
party. Other Pop-Up Posters are vagrant Preachers, Loons or Wackos
pursuing a migratory path around Usenet having been cold-shouldered on
the newsgroups they once called home.
Style: Polite: "Hi - I was actually looking for something else entirely
on Google Groups when I found your query about peanut butter - I like
peanut butter." "Sorry, I'm not a regular here, but I'm looking for
information on heat-resistant enamel paints." Flame: "I say string the
lot of them up!"
The Parochial Poster
For the Parochial Poster, the world begins and ends at their own
national boundaries. Anything beyond those borders either doesn't exist
or has no right to exist therefore all judgements are based on the
Parochial Poster's locality. Most have only the vaguest notion of
geography, foreign politics or world history and have an inflated
opinion of their own country's importance relative to the rest of the
world. Not so much xenophobic as xeno-ignorant, anything foreign is met
with disbelief or incomprehension. They remain secure in the belief that
their country's policies are the panacea for all world problems - if
only other countries could be made to understand that fact.
Style: "You wouldn't have those problems if you did it our way." "Their
economy is based on goats."
The Sign-Writer
While some posters have short witticisms in their sig file, the
Sign-Writer's 2-line postings are nothing more than a vehicle for his 25
line (minimum) sig file. While adding the minimum possible content to
the conversation, he aims to impress the group with his ASCII art,
lyrics quotations, inspirational quotes plus the entire text of
Midsummer Night's Dream, all rounded off by some obscure systems for
encoding his entire life-history in acronyms and mathematical notation.
Some Sign-Writers have so many URLs and comments in their sig files that
you are certain they are renting out their sigs as advertising
billboards or electronic Wayside Pulpits.
Style: Two line posting and 25-line signatures. The ratio of signature
to content being at least 4-to-1 in favour of the signature, "C++
AU-/+(ZWB- -)* CKQ ++++/++++"
Verbatim Quoting Man (VQM)
King of the quote-marks, VQM has no concept of snipping. Entire rambling
thread conversations are reproduced in their 400 kilobyte entirety (with
their signatures!), presumably to give an entire history of VQM's
thought processes - or to demonstrate his lack of mastery of the
"delete" key.
Style:
John Smith wrote
Quoted message said:Fred Bloggs wrote
Quoted message said:Amy Jones mumbled
I disagree entirely with what
:>>John Smith muttered in message
:>>Star trek last night was great!
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:since I thought it was rubbish
{400 more lines quoted by VQM in his posting, but cut here for brevity}
Quoted message said:--
The Hooded Claw
I quite liked it.
--
VQM
Kaptain Kontext-Away (KKA)
A person of few words, the enigmatic KKA is the diametrically opposed
poster to VQM. He snips so much of his posts that his own words become
cryptic and mysterious. He leaves his readers little, if any, context.
Not only does he conserve bandwidth as though it is water in a desert,
he feels that if you need to leave context, your readers obviously
aren't paying enough attention. If they have short attention spans and
poor memories it's their problem, not his!
Style: In response to a thread asking 5 questions and making one
assumption he might snip the entire thread and reply "No thanks, I've
already had one."
Monosyllable Man
Untalkative in the extreme, Monosyllable Man can respond to even the
longest and best explained treatise with a single phrase, single word or
even a single syllable. Economical in the extreme with his own words,
and a close relative of Verbatim Quoting Man when quoting others, his
contribution may be a grunted "And?" or "So?". While others may express
much in few words, Monosyllable Man's contributions are limited to
agreement, disagreement, indifference or contempt.
Style: Yeah. So? Eh? And? Your point is? No way. [censored]!
Captain Anonymous
The heyday of Captain Anonymous passed with the demise of anonymous
remailers. Those who remain camouflage themselves with pseudonyms and mu
ltiple email addresses or hide behind a smokescreen of fake Hotmail
accounts. A few have genuine reasons to be anonymous, but most simply
want a cloak of invisibility from which to lob insults and invective at
other users while bouncing back return shots as undeliverable mail.
Style: Most often controversial. Identified mainly because the return
address is a fake, often obviously so.