A quick rant-delete it or think about it

[Bart Silverstrim]

In the years I've followed newsgroups and mailing lists, I've seen what 
seems like one utterly out of control thread every week on at least one 
of the groups.  People going off topic, being inflammatory, 
irritating,...generally just being obnoxious or ignorant.

Every single time these threads DIE OFF on their own given some time. 
Something else comes up, or people get bored enough to move on.

And yet there's always somebody who, despite the thread dying off, keeps 
perpetuating that problem, either by adding to the echoes out of some 
need to have the last word or by complaining to the listmom to come in 
and add yet ANOTHER message to the thread people were complaining was 
going too long.

Am I the only one that thinks this is foolish?  What does it accomplish? 
  Has anyone EVER seen a thread that ran perpetually and continuously? 
I've seen issues pop back up periodically, but never continuously.

*sigh*

I apologize for the rant.  I've said it before on lists...if you want 
the thread to die, SHUT UP.  Quit feeding the thread.  Why is this such 
a difficult concept for people?!

:-/  Again, I'm sorry.  I'll not say any more about this on this list. 
I just get so fed up with seeing this happen...seeing that someone, or a 
couple people, are so driven that they are compelled to perpetuate the 
very thing they're trying to stop.

I'll be quiet now.  Unless, of course, someone decided to pay some 
literary retribution, probably just illustrating my point.  Maybe this 
thread will become a self-referential bit of irony.

$DEITY, I hope not.