Behavior in Vista Newsgroup

Sometimes I discuss (have a blazing row with) my father about all sorts of things. We each explain (at great volume) our points of view to the other hoping to persuade them (by beating any given point to death) that our view is the more accurate.

Observers of this behavior will wonder if they shouldn't move the sharp objects out of the room. Just to be on the safe side.

But the truth is that my father and I have the greatest respect for one another.
We can just be very bad at listening to one another. :)

Whilst looking for a suitable newsgroup in order to post about my Vista problem I came across microsoft.public.windows.vista.general.

I posted about my problem and went about my business. I had naturally added this newsgroup to my newsreader Omea Pro, so when I was informed by said reader that an absolute torrent of posts had appeared in said newsgroup, my interest was of course piqued.

I clicked the folder and started to read the titles of the posts hoping for some response to mine.

I'm afraid that I have to report, to those of you lucky enough not to already know, that the 5 year olds have taken over this newsgroup.

There are some valid informative posts in this newsgroup, but they are largely hidden, for the moment at least, by the relative avalanche of "alternative" posts wherein the correspondents have long forgotten any actual facts that their arguments might have been based on, and settled instead upon the time honored strategy of name-calling.

The signal:noise ratio is approx 10-15:1

Wow that's a lot of Crap. Do these people really have nothing better to do that to "virtually" shout names at one another across the ether can they really maintain this constant level of bickering about nothing.

My 2 eldest children are rather adept at fighting in that way that siblings will do about almost anything. But even they eventually get bored and give up.

I hope that I never reach the stage where reasoned argument is forsaken and personal flaming rapidly becomes the default strategy.

I think I'm going to start listening to my father a little more.