Originally Posted by kevin

I have been watching the situation deteriorate over the last few months at rec.ponds. It is particularly sad as it was a vibrant and friendly place to discuss ponding.

There have been many examples of newsgroups over-run by abusive trolls, sometimes the group don't survive, but often they can bounce back if the core of regulars haven't disappeared entirely.

As far as GardenBanter is concerned, it is something that bothers me. I believe in an unmoderated approach and the freedoms that Usenet posting provide, but with a 9/10 posts being abuse on this group currently I will ultimately have to drop rec.ponds if this situation continues.

However, I haven’t reached that point yet. I have applied a set of filters based on mail-to-news gateways and anonymous servers which I hope will see some improvement and I have removed the 2500 posts from the flood bot, although there are limits to what can be achieved by this if the posters are determined enough.

What you see now will make rec.ponds (via GardenBanter) a bit more readable and hopefully the situation improves over the next few weeks.