someone just posted a personal ad to soc.singles! Should I flame the pants off this person?
That depends; if you can think of a wonderfully witty and entertaining way to flame the ad, go ahead; otherwise it’s not generally worth the trouble of putting up a public post about it for the whole world to read and it might be better just to send a note to the poster in email suggesting that this is uncool. If you do want to respond publicly, you might want to change the subject from “lonely speedboat owner seeks fellow marmalade enthusiast” to something more like “No Personals, Please (was: lonely speedboat owner seeks…)”; that way people just scanning the topics or reading the newsgroup with nn or other newsreaders that just show you the subjects unless you select the article won’t get the impression from reading the headers that personals are the mainstay of soc.singles–plus, those people who don’t want to read the flames generated by personals can just put “/No Personals, Please/:j” into their killfiles.
