"Telamon" wrote in message
...
The signal to noise level has been very high the past few weeks but
hopefully it will settle down now that we are almost in the back to
school season.

The regulars might want to reassess responding to the Trolling
faction
as it has, in my opinion, suppressed any new responsible people
joining
the news group. The number of posts of new people asking where else
can
they go for SW radio information and not hearing from them again
should
be a clue that the growth in new responsible posters has not
increased
but the trolling faction has certainly increased.

Lately the news group has even descended to the pathetic point of
threatening bodily harm over Usenet.

I'm not sure the news group can recover to even the appearance of on
topic discourse as the Trolling faction appears to have reached
critical mass. In other words there is enough Trolling idiots
carrying
on amongst themselves that this could be an indefinite state of
affairs
in the news group even if all the regular on topic posters were to
ignore them, which they don't.

Statistically the news group has moved from about 1/3 off topic to
about 1/2 and now for the last few weeks about 2/3 of posts are off
topic but that's not all. The usual political ranting has turned
more
and more toward disgusting sexual innuendo, racism, threats and
really
nasty flaming.

I find it psychologically interesting that people, which otherwise
have
an interest in the short wave radio would want the news group to
deteriorate to this level.

I rationally can't expect that NEW people or the thin skinned would
want to post here if the wide majority of posts are flaming,
threatening, foul and off topic. I figure that many of the people
that lurk here for information have also left.

I'm sure that things'll slow down a bit a month or so
after Katrina. People will probably get tired of the
same old arguments, and move on to other off topic
postings.

--Mike L.