I'm not firecat but Yabbut is

A: So in response to your question of "Why foo?" my answer is "bar."

B: Yeah, but what about "baz?"

A: Hmm, well in response to that I'd say "blahblah."

B: Yeah, but what about "skippy-doo?"

[repeat ad nauseum]

Yabbut refers to the standard opening of "Yeah, but..."

A really good player of Yabbut can get you around to the original question of "Why foo?" without ever accepting any of the answers provided.

For some values of "really good."

ed wright! egads, that takes me back.

anyway, the short answer is "yes". or maybe it's "no". it depends on how much work you want to put into your kill/select file. alt.poly is one of those groups where the real chaff is very easy to tell, and you can just killfile those twits. but if you only have a limited amount of time available, it becomes very hard to come up with a good algorithm to read only what's interesting, because even people who're in general well worth reading can often not leave well enough alone when engaging in nitpicking (*guilty*), or they get into long fluffy cascades, or Must Hammer Sense into the head of a twit whom i've already killfiled, etc.

i basically (when i read, which alas i am not right now) read everything because of that (aside from the twits whom i killfile very quickly), but sometimes i just whiz through hitting the "next" key while skimming along.

it's always been a very worthwhile group for me though, and if i had any extra time at all, that's where it'd go.

What pir_anha said. Also, if I am really short on time, I use a select file for posters and a kill file for certain threads.

"Outlaw Husband." We had a marriage ceremony, but didn't tell the government.

Ooooo. I un-killfiled a certain someone and almost piped up about it. But perhaps I'm already losing enough hair to age, and should just stay out of it. (The yabbut tactic of "I really appreciate your answers...you stupid gits!" is quite effective against my teetering wall of patience.)