InfoWar and a.r.s

It seems to me we are seeing an example of Information Warfare in the
doings around alt.religion.scientology.  The board game "Go" models warfare
by having a goal of controlling territory.  In the a.r.s war, we see the
combatants trying to control the newsgroup.  We even see an arms race with
weapons such as cancelbots being developed and employed.

The major difference between newsgroup war and conventional war is that the
dimension a victor needs to control is time and not space.

One question to ponder is whether the a.r.s war will perform the same role
as the Spanish Civil War vs. WW2.  Will we see newsgroup war expand to
other news groups?  I would think a few of the .culture.* groups could be
candidates.


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Bill Frantz       | The CDA means  | Periwinkle  --  Computer Consulting
(408)356-8506     | lost jobs and  | 16345 Englewood Ave.
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On Mon, 10 Jun 1996, Bill Frantz wrote:

> One question to ponder is whether the a.r.s war will perform the same role
> as the Spanish Civil War vs. WW2.  Will we see newsgroup war expand to
> other news groups?  I would think a few of the .culture.* groups could be
> candidates.

Already happened. That's why soc.genealogy.african went moderated a few
months ago. The people in soc.culture.jewish deal with it by posting a
killfile FAQ regularly. Looks like soc.culture.latin-american, which I
followed for academic reasons three years ago, just gave up, splitting into
country-specific groups that are moderated. Pity.

alt.slack beat them off because, well, they're so much smarter and funnier
than any troller. :-)

Some (supposedly) closed mailing lists are openly talking about a vertical
spam of alt.revisionism. Someone new to alt.revisionism might think it has
already happened, but in fact the group is eminently readable and productive
for both sides if you killfile just two people, and followups to their
articles (three if you count the current incarnation of Serdar Argic, who
should be in everyone's global killfile). 

The general mood in news.groups is tilting towards at least robo-moderation
(posts handled by an automatic script that can have a twit filter). I think
it's a shame.

-rich