This article is referenced periodically when I see a flamefest arising in a newsgroup or other on-line forum to which I subscribe. It is not about any particular net pest, and in fact, my expansive netnews killfile probably prevented me from even seeing the original articles that are fanning the flames.

Before responding to a net crank, or even responding to a discussion thread infected by a crank, be sure to also see the NetNews Risks article.

17. Gee, and I bet you thought people like this were confined to the other newsgroups. I take it you've never heard of [deleted] huh?
1. The net is like a public sidewalk. There's no control over what passers-by will say, or how they will say it.

17. I would like to see this stopped. Can anyone suggest anything to help the situation?
1. The killfile is your friend. Use it. If you want to make the net (more or less) safe for your kids to browse, buy a sanitizing browser.

The following narrative shares some other considerations for dealing with obnoxious net posters, and is not necessarily relevant to any particular case at hand...

If you are using a moderated forum (as many privately operated bulletin boards are), and you are sure that a poster's abuse puts them in violation of their agreement with that forum, you can email the moderator and file a complaint. Moderators are enabled to make both the abuser, and all the abusive articles, vanish (if the facts merit that). For unmoderated forums...

If you are sure that a poster's abuse puts them in violation of their agreement with their ISP, you can write to the "postmaster" or "abuse" account at their site. If you are correct, this may have some effect, but more often than not, abusive posters aren't actually in violation; they are just obnoxious and annoying.

Once you have identified a repeat abusive poster or "net crank", the most effective action is to ignore them entirely. Use the kill-by-address and kill-by-subject features of your newsreader to ignore them, and any discussions about them, and their fetish topics. If they actually have some valid point to make, let someone more rational echo it; then respond to the echo.

You can often spot posters worth ignoring via one or more of the following classical crank attributes:

Righteousness

They are unwilling to be mistaken. They never acknowledge error, even on trivial matters. Even when presented with literal quotes from their own earlier postings, about the most you will get is a non-denial denial that they wrote it.

Evasion

Despite their incredible volumes of postings, they never seem to have time to respond to pointed remarks that expose flaws in their arguments. When they quote from on-target articles, they only copy irrelevant text. Changing the topic (misdirection) is a mainstay of their technique.

Blathering

Argument by repetition, unsupported claim, context-dropping and spin-doctoring: They rely on "facts" not in evidence and never seem to have time to post in-context references that might support their conclusions. Anything quoted is out of context, and may not even be from a discussion on the same topic. They stubbornly assume that their interpretation is the only correct one.

Double Standards

They threaten others whose articles are actually less offensive than their own.

Libel

Their articles often contain actionable material.

Amnesia

They are incapable of remembering their past errors and lies, much less adjusting their behaviour to avoid repeating previous outrages.

Hostility

They indirectly acknowledge the weakness of their position by resorting to all the normal underhanded tricks of incompetent debaters, plus copious volumes of ad hominem; from simple name-calling to sophmoric psychological judgementalism.

Idiolectic

Just because it looks like English, don't assume it is, depending on how you define "is".

Obsessed and Disconnected

After you've been reading their stuff for a while, you begin to realize that they seem to be driven by some central theme, but are writing in what is ultimately just a simulation of a human language. It looks vaguely familiar on the surface, but is not firmly connected to reality, much less the topic at hand.

Expletives

Their command of their language is so weak, and the intellectual content of their prose is so vacuous, that they have to "punch it up" with words intended to mock, provoke, shock and/or hurt. Without those words, they'd have a great deal less to say.

Cluelessness

They are fully capable of reading all of the above, and failing to recognize that they meet most or all of these criteria.

Don't help them grind their axe. Do not get into debates with them or otherwise engage them via news or email. It will not serve you, but it will tire you, waste your time, eventually bore you, and might even result in considerable annoyance to you.

Net cranks often try to make trouble with your ISP or employer, and will even harrass you at your residence. In the extreme, you might even find yourself being summoned to testify in a net-libel case brought against the crank by some third party (which might have happened during 1998 in a case that arose from a sci.skeptic libel, had the crank not died, making the case moot).

When you see other ernest users replying to a net crank, email the URL of this article to them and suggest that they also shun the crank.

As the Internet becomes more and more accessible to just about everyone, you will eventually electronically encounter the same mix of personalities that you meet on any random city street - quite literally from courteously erudite scholars to vitriolic and incomprehensible psychiatric out-patients.

Every newsgroup has at least one "killfile poster child". There's not much you can do about the trouble they cause for themselves, but you can avoid causing yourself the problems noted above. Perhaps more significantly, you can also avoid building a net history of being associated with net cranks and their often acrimonious tirades.

Net cranks usually just want attention.
Deny them.

Killfile

A killfile is a filter that excludes material from your newsreader (aka Usenet discussion group browser), typically by author, topic and/or subject line. The name derives from Unix newsreaders, which store the exclusionary descriptors in a separate file. Your newsreader may have a different name for it, or not have the feature at all, in which case you need to obtain a newsreader that does.

Sanitizing Browser

Numerous browsers (and perhaps some add-ons for the major browsers) are available that restrict access to URLs, usually based on screening performed by the browser supplier, but some rely on site self-certification.