Peter Foldes <> wrote:
<top-posting macro corrected>
>>> what is a leech post?
>>
>> Peter has taken it upon himself to inform everyone when a post comes
>> from a vBulletin web-based forum.
>>
>> Makes no difference here, except that his "leech post" posts add to
>> the noise end of the signal-to-noise ratio in the groups.
>
> Only this Vista newsgroup answers these posts. Other newsgroups have
> already learned how to recognize it.
> Answering these posts is a waste of bandwidth and effort. Once most
> catch on here I will stop advising on these leech posts
>
> To recognize a leech post you usually see the following on the bottom of
> the post Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com and most start with Re: in
> their heading or
> In the post properties it is posted by Usenet Gateway
>
There is no harm in other ways of accessing this newsgroup, other than a lot
of forum posters answering very old posts without quoting what they are
replying to. What other harm do they do exactly?
What is more harmful to Usenet is the influx of Usenet newbies that
top-post, who appeared in the later '90s, like yourself*. They make a mess
of Usenet, although this is only widespread in Microsoft newsgroups, and
generally not tolerated in newsgroups frequented by more experienced users.
* Outlook Express (although otherwise good, IMO), is largely to blame
because of the way it made the cursor appear at the top of replies (which is
only sensible in emails between two people). It also did not strip sigs, or
add the space after the -- to make [de facto] standards compliant
newsresaders strip them.
ss.