Right now I compile and maintain the FAQ for "soc.culture.taiwan" for
both the plain text and HTML versions. I also keep the HTML version
of FAQ for "soc.culture.china". As you guys probably have noticed
that recently the China/Taiwan issue turns quite heated for the
potential military conflict, together with two aircraft carriers from
US Navy nearby, the powder strength in these two "soc.culture.xxxx"
groups are quite high. If you come here, you will see many posts
crossposted to these two groups arguing about politics.
I joined Usenet around 1.5 years ago. After reading "soc.culture.taiwan"
for some time, I noticed that a guy usually posts something against
Republic of China (the current government in Taiwan) while praising
People's Republic of China (the current government commonly known as
China). People were following his posts up again and again asking him
to provide some references or evidences for his accusations, but he did
not. I would like to do something about it, and I compile a FAQ for
him, by collecting some posts from him, some posts from people when
following him up, and adding some of my own comments (meant to be
humorous). Up to now I have already put three FAQ HTML documents in
the UCLA SEAS WWW server about individual posters, and it seems right
now I did not experience any problems with these files.
Since I did not just "archive" his posts, instead I edit a file on
my own and "refer" to his posts, with the Date:, Subject: Message-ID:
and part of the message body included, he no longer has the right to
urge me to remove these files, I think. At least right now all three
of them disappeared or lurked in SCT and SCC. One of them complained
to postmasters at UCLA SEAS, but the administrator seems to stand on my
side. Nevertheless, I know eventually this will bring them some hassles,
and therefore I am also following up the issue currently discussed in
the FAQ maintainer mailing list.
I don't really know. Writing a FAQ on an individual (inspired by a
FAQ written in another group I read) is like a sword with double edges.
It "kills" the offensive poster by making his posts last longer and
read by many more people, and at the same time put my own credit at risk.
Nevertheless, I have to say that this seems to be the only known good
way to stop a frequent offender. For "soc.culture.taiwan", it is not
moderated, and there is no justfied way to stop someone from posting.
I can use killfiles, but every time he posts, many people will follow
him up flaming him and ask him for references. Again and again, I
think writing a FAQ might save the bandwidth so he does not need to lie
again and again and people do not need to flame him again and again.
It takes me a few hours (fortunately I can afford it as I am still a
single graduate student) but it saves other netters a lot.
Just try to contribute some views along this line. I don't think the
FAQ maintainer should be a "net guard" for a specific newsgroup, but
at times doing this can save a lot of troubles, which is more or less
compatible with the reason why we compile a FAQ.
For our friend from "soc.culture.bulgaria", like other people did, I
suggested he could simply refer the interested readers to Dejanews
and Alta Vista. Or he can keep archiving the offender's post but
remove it from the WWW browsing, with a statement like "interested
readers can send an E-mail here for the posts from Mr. Xxx". Maybe a
better way is that since he is an offender, there could be some people
who are willing to take care of the posts without the potential problem
from an educational site.
Last and never least, I am not a lawyer :)
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