On 24 Mar 2007 05:26:13 -0700, "Steve" wrote
in om:

Sooner or later they'll grow tired.

That time will arrive when their provocative contributions to this
newsgroup fail to elicit responses. As long as readers are unable to
resist contributing their comments to the message thread, thus
sustaining its life, the troll will feel that his efforts are being
rewarded.

Traditionally, the means of dealing with Usenet content a reader would
prefer not to see is through the mechanism of configuring his news
reader client software, so that the messages headers containing
certain key words, or those posted by specific authors are blocked
locally from being displayed. Once undesirable message topics and/or
authors have been kill-filed, the reader suddenly sees a newsgroup
devoid of undesirable content, and the response rate to the troll's
articles begins to drop. When the troll finds his best efforts at
disruption unrewarding, the door is open for him to move along to
exercise his anti-social bent in newsgroups that haven't yet wised-up
to his trolling.

So if you truly want to see the newsgroup devoid of certain content
you find less than desirable, write some rules for your news reader's
kill file. In the end, improving the newsgroup's signal-to-noise
ratio is not about moderating the newsgroup; it's about you personally
taking responsibility for the newsgroup content you see.