I'm new and I'm not a troller!

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Welcome to the group, Hammondlover.

Bill Bill's Railroad Empire

LOL. I su - erm - am not very good at piano!

FYI, if you want to be seen as a non-troll, here's some advice:

1). Sign each message with your real name. This indicates that you stand behind what you say. Trolls usually use blatantly false names or no name at all because if it ever got out that they behave like lunatics, they'd suffer a little at either work or at home. 2). Use a real NNTP connection to post to the group. Web-based postings from Google are generally used by trolls due to the fact that they are free and to the common user, untraceable. This means that a troll cannot be tracked down and get his ISP account terminated for violating his TOS/AUP for being a troll. 3). Use a "real" e-mail account in your return field. Yahoo, Hotmail and other free web-based e-mail accounts are notorious for Trolls. Sure, you can "munge" your return addy (as in "j (underscore) smith (at) earthlink (dot) com") so you don't get as much spam, but using the freebie accounts is not the way to encourage folks that you aren't a troll. 4). Post to more than one thread, on more than one subject, and actively try to either help people by answering their questions, or ask questions to try and get a good discussion going. Most trolls only want to cause pain, and would sooner bite off their own arm than help people. 5). Never bring up politics or religion in a non-political or non-religous newsgroup. And if someone does bring it up, never respond to it. Nothing good will come of it. You won't change their mind, and they won't change yours, so what's the point? It'll just be a blood bath and will kill the group, eventually. 6). Never respond to an obvious troll. For example, I had some loser actually title a thread here with my name in it. I didn't reply at all, and it quickly faded away (if only everyone else would do that). 7). Don't use ALL CAPS, don't overuse exclamation points (!), don't post binaries (pictures), don't launch personal attacks...IOW, be a good netizen, and you'll be welcome on any newsgroup. Just like in real life, if you go into a group or gathering and come off as a big jerk, people will think the worst of you. If you come in like a real nice guy, you'll be greeted with open arms.

Paul A. Cutler III

************* Weather Or No Go New Haven *************

I'll always use the same name, and you can have me email if you want, but I have no intention of discussing politics here. I already know of groups that have deteriorated into anarchy due to this.

On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 11:21:10 -0700, I said, "Pick a card, any card" and Hammondlover instead replied:

Anarchy? Here on USENET? Surely you're joking!

By the way, welcome aboard.

-- Ray

Hammondlover spake thus:

Welcome. Just a couple of things (and you can forget some of the dire admonitions you've received from other replies here; you'll figure things out):

1. The term is "troll", not troller. So far, pretty obvious you aren't one.
2. Trolls and spammers are two entirely different creatures. Spammers post unwanted commercial announcements in multiple Usenet newsgroups, usually unrelated to the group's subject. Also obvious you aren't one.
3. Do agree with someone else who suggested not using Google Groups for posting & reading, unless you really like that web page interface. Try a "real" Usenet client (for instance, Mozilla Thunderbird, which is free). Lots easier & faster reading through the group.

One thing to keep in mind if you use Google to post is that whenever you "edit" a message, the rest of us (those who access this group through NNTP and not Google) will see both the old and the new messages, which clutter things up considerably. Shame on Google for "features" like this!

Anyhow, have fun.

My son has an old 50s organ with tubes in it. Is it worth anything?

Amen to that. 40tude Dialog (also free) is another good one.

I have even better idea. When someone discovers this forum why not just post a normal on-topic message not even mentioning trolling. That would have worked perfectly and would have prevent any long lectures from current members. :-)

I've been posting using Google Groups for several years now and except for occasional Mark Newton head-butting, I post on-topic.

Peteski

So, you only own engines? What do you model in N scale?

As far as troll proof - we'll have to wait few weeks to see. And if you were a troll, I (and most, but not all people on this forum) would ignore you.

Peteski

All those engines are O27. My HO and N are currently in storage and are too numerous to list.

Wayne: Unfortunately only a very select few electric organs are worth anything (for now), these are mainly Hammond Consoles, the largest of the Hammonds. You'll have to describe the organ more.

If it has 2 switches and requires a fancy start-up process (like a diesel engine) then I can guarantee it's a Hammond.

"Pac Man" wrote in news:mBxci.6$u65.5@trndny07:

Hm... my handle isn't a real name, but most people don't regard me as a troll.

I don't mind Google Groupers, but honestly for reading r.m.r, a NNTP connection is best. You can use a real news reader with kill files and filtering. I haven't seen anywhere near the volume of trash messages here that people have complained about.

Many people use a fake or invalid email address in the from field so the bots don't pick it up. If you "munge" your email address like Pac Man suggests, it would only take a few seconds to write a program to "demunge" it and spam it.

Those who do use a fake or invalid address usually provide a real one in some form in their signature.

I agree.

You might also want to look up Godwin's law.

Agreed.

It's usually a good idea to do a search for "Usenet Etiquitte" and read a couple of the resulting sites. There are things you'll never think of that just tick people off. (Biggest one that gets me is not using blank lines to seperate your reply from the previous reply.)

Puckdropper

People throw Godwins law all over the place. It's more like an internet murphy law.

It's not the "handle" that should be your real name (for example, mine is "Pac Man"), but that you should sign your real name in each post (see below). For example, do I call you "Hammond" or "Lord Vader"? Neither one sounds like a first name to me (hint, hint). BTW, directly e-mailing folks is usually considered bad manners when discussing a group topic. If you have something to say about this group, say it to everyone so all can see.

Paul A. Cutler III

************* What have you done to save r.m.r today? *************

Certainly. My point was on how trolls usually operate on newsgroups. But these methods are certainly not all inclusive. Back before free e-mail accounts, life was different here. As well as pre-DejaNews.

Oh, I don't mind Google posters either. But there are a lot of Trolls that use them.

Well, there's munging and then there's munging. Mine was but the simplest example I could think of at the time. Many folks munge their return addy, then post the key to unlocking it in their sig. For example, "Replace the Tortoise with the Hare to reply"...etc. (and their munged addy is j snipped-for-privacy@tortoise.com and it should be j snipped-for-privacy@hare.com).

Thanks for the reply.

Paul A. Cutler III

************* Weather Or No Go New Haven *************

Okay ... let us review some things here. You have stated that you aren't a troll and sounded eager to be a good netizen and contribute. Someone provided a well though out list of suggestions on exactly how to do that.

1) You completely ignored the most excellent suggestion of actually signing a name. Something besides a stupid handle so that when someone chooses to respond they don't start off with "Hey Dork". 2) You responded to a rather lengthy message of maybe 80 lines with a two sentence reply and couldn't be bothered with trimming out the superfluous text.

So far you are zero for two. You might revisit Pauls response and reread it. There is much valuable information there that would benefit everyone.

Bill

[Usenet, DARPA and ARPA net since 1980] Argh it aint pretty what this has turned into.

I'm not an english professor, and I've never been taught proper internet protocol.

Everything I have written has been in response to a question. Dating an identifiying electric organs is not a cut and run job without details.

Michael T. Downes Aka "Hammondlover"

Hammondlover spake thus:

[snip]

Don't let the overly-anal advice here get to you. So long as you post

*reasonably* on-topic stuff from time to time and otherwise use common sense, no need to worry about violating any "rules". Hey, even the "respected regulars" around here wander off-topic all the time. And so far as using your real name goes, that's up to you as well. There are lots of folks whose posts I regularly read who I have no idea what their actual name is.