My recent experience trying to recommend a good product that I firmly believe in to the LQ community led me on a trip down memory lane. Since my recommendation apparently belonged in the blog instead of the forum I can't say here what it was, but I thought the community might enjoy a digital stroll down the avenue of nostalgia with me.

I'm glad we have sensible mods here, but do you remember those annoying, but fun to taunt, people on Usenet back in the day when it was much more prominent, before there was IM, social networking, blogging, and forums like these?

You know, the ORDINARY USERS who claimed to be intimately familiar with every single TOS in existence, feigned injurious calamity and heartache at anything resembling the slightest incidental infraction (even if accidental), and fired off complaint emails to God and everybody if they thought they saw one?

These nancies were the self-appointed moderators of groups that already had moderators and didn't need more. More often, they thought of themselves as some kind of Wyatt Earp of the digital age, taming the wild frontier in the UNmoderated groups by complaining loudly and repeatedly to the ISP of anyone who slipped up and typed even so much as one profanity or cross-posted to more than one group only one time.

They were often referred to as a "netkop". Sometimes their little hobby was given the same name, i.e. "netkopping" or to "netkop" somebody. There were also less savory names.

Remember those funny guys? You would never have gotten them to admit it, but clearly they had control issues and thought they could rule the world via email writing campaigns about TOS violations. They probably pointed out the jaywalkers to cops standing on the street corner when they were kids.

Ahh. Those were the good old days, tormenting the netkops on usenet.

There was one who was especially easy to poke, named R**** F***** (name redacted by LM, although I should leave it to see if someone netkops me to the mods ). He tenaciously netkopped every stranger who came into the unmoderated "alt." Mini Cooper group that he thought he owned. He was so incensed at me for deliberately doing the opposite of what he told me to that he even blamed me when another person that he netkopped posted dirty pictures to the group with his face pasted on. He tried to tell the world that I was going to jail for it! What a puffed-up good-for nothing. I still check in on him every so often, and he still has the same broken-down Mini with a fresh paint job, the same run-down old dump of a house in Tulsa, and still tours with the same lousy garage band pretending he's a rock star.

Enough nostalgia from me for one day. Just remember to be on the lookout for these cretins. They are much rarer now, but they still lurk amongst us and it was my encounter with one that sent me on this trip down memory lane. It's a good thing I'm a lot older and less hotheaded now or I'd be trying to find out about this guy's house, car, and offline hobbies .

Do you have any stories about an encounter with an especially stubborn, tenacious, or LOUD, netkop like my old friend in Tulsa?

Do share!

viel gluck,

J

I used to be a sysop back in the old days, on a few different BBSs. It was always fun to see these people - and even more fun to restrict them to the low baud modems, or kick them entirely.

There was one in particular, now that you mention it, who was so obnoxious that we actually had to end up giving him a special title and forum all his own. It was worth it - nothing sucks like taking one of these guys and actually *making* them moderate a forum. It's not so easy when you're in charge.

HERE and right NOW on this forum
we have self appointed spelling police
as well as proper english writing police
along with use !@#$%^&*()_+{[}]|\:;"'<>/? police
hell we even have some here who are offended with things like M$ or windoze or windbloz

no these people are still around far from being a thing of the past

some of those would be the actual moderators
this is a technical forum not a social network and chat speak like plz, pls, l8er, etc.. can be confusing to some of the members who don't speak good english to begin with

i don't see people complaining too much about poor english since not everyone here is good at english

unfortunately i didn't spend much time on bbses, but i do remember people like that on occasion.

Thankfully I didn't get into computing till Usenet had pretty much run it's course....but I have participated on forums which operated pretty much like that. One in particular comes to mind- it was a chicken[poultry] forum (of all things!) on Yahoo forums. (I don't know if they've updated in more recent years- but back a few years ago, their forums were very primitive and much like the old Usenet) and there was so much nonsense there!!! I got hassled so much for expressing my opinion (which was often contrary to the prominent posters)...that I was constantly hounded to the point where I just said "screw it", and spammed the forum really good one day and quit!

Then there are those Craigslist forums...UUUUHhhhggg!!! Probably the closest thing to usenet...and full of weirdos and loons!

One of the most absurd was a site devoted to the sit-com All In The Family (of which I am a huge fan)- it's auto-censor was so sensitive, and it's owner so politically-correct, that you could quote Archie Bunker verbatim, and your post would be censored! Did you ever hear of a forum where you get censored for quoting the very object of the forum's focus?!

I ran my own All In The Family forum for a few years (It still exists, but I gave it someone else, as there was little interest) and it was completely unmoderated and 100% free-speech....with the one exception being: I'd remove pure spam. It worked great! It saddens me greatly that free speech is so little appreciated these days, that it is almost non-existent on the net. People gave up their lives and fortunes so that we could have free speech...but today, so many are more worried that someone's little feelings may be hurt if they hear something critical.

I wish I could have done as much to that hippie in Tulsa.

Why do I call him a hippie? He often waxed nostalgic about racing mini coopers in Canada in the 60's and cited his friendship with several RCMP's as his superiority over "deviants" like me. What was a guy from Tulsa doing in Canada in the 60's? Dodging the draft, of course! Many of the people in the groups he and I frequented were American Vietnam veterans, or just plain servicemen/veterans like myself. The tides suddenly turned against him when I pointed that out.

I sure miss ranking on him sometimes. I even had him so worked up for a while that he hired a private detective to come to my house and harass me, under the guise of taking my picture so he'd know what I look like (for his own protection, or course). I guess the 2 or 3 different pictures of me that were on the net at the time in various places with my name attached weren't good enough. He also had an address to send the detectives to because I had given it to him when challenging him to come look me in the eye while telling me what I can and can't say. LOL

viel Gluck,

J

I'd say that (on the internet) "free speech" is still actively being used to insult other people for no reason. Can't say it is "appreciated", though.

IRL, too. Not appreciated IRL, either. In either case, I would rather suffer the mouths of a few netkops and other idiots than sacrifice my own liberty to squelch them.

viel Gluck,

J