(was Re: Xah's Edu Corner: Criticism vs Constructive Criticism)

[Tagore Smith]

John Bokma wrote:
> Eli Gottlieb <eligottlieb at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Oh, God, not another one.
>
> Instead of cross posting more garbage, do as follows:
>
> Email a complaint to the email addresses you can look up yourself and
> include the entire message of Xah:
>
> http://www.spamcop.net/sc?track=72.231.179.135    	posting host
> http://www.spamcop.net/sc?track=xahlee.org    	    	spamvertized site

Xah Lee has been around for a long time. I don't claim to understand
him, but I don't think he is a troll- I think he is sincere in his
postings, even if they are gibberish to everyone else. The only thing
he is doing that should be considered abuse is crossposting to several
groups (and he should certainly stop doing that). But he is only
crossposting to about eight or so groups- hardly a Dave Rhodes
incident.

The great thing about Usenet is that it gives everyone a soapbox, even
the slightly warped. Xah Lee should stop crossposting, but the fact
that he is incoherent should not bar him from posting messages. He is
actually a pretty interesting fellow when it comes to certain aspects
of mathematics- I don't know if he still maintains his site about knot
theory, but it was quite interesting, last time I looked.

It's much easier to use a killfile than to complain to an ISP, and I
think that that should be the preferred response to messages you don't
like. Complaints to ISPs should be reserved for egregious abuse of the
Usenet infrastructure.