What is happening to this NG?

Four or so years ago when I started posting here this NG was alive with
knowledgeable Saturn owners who came here selflessly to discuss all things
Saturn and help each other resolve problems. Lately though this has been a
harbor for trolls and naysayer who has only one intention, which is to slam
Saturn and deter others from enjoying the company of those who should be
here. You know who you are.

What is happening here and where have all the good posters gone? I have
always enjoyed speaking with the likes of Lane, Oppie, BlahBlah and many
others, but now I am disheartened by all the trollness from others here whom
derive extreme joy out of ruining a good thing. You know who you are.

Faux name-changing posters who ask baiting questions then presume another
user name only to bash, people who have no clue about anything other than
how to be ugly, rumor-spreaders and plain garden variety a**holes. Yep, it's
a salad-toss here and there's alot of salad-tossers here all too eager to
prove themselves. You know who you are and will most likely reply to this
now, won't you? And that's the purpose of this post, go ahead and prove me
right.

This NG is for Saturn owners not trolls.

 

At least it is still an active NewsGroup.
Griping about trolls doesn't solve anything - it feeds them.
It's so simple to ignore .. just ignore.
I recently subscribed to 3 Ford NewsGroups ..
... all are in-active ... dead - all 3.
I was hoping to get some feedback or info on my son's first vehicle
Ford Ranger 2004.
This is still a valid newsgroup - if the good guys leave - please
let us know where you are hanging out .. something like
FlatRateTech would be nice ..
jt

 

I think many people have moved to discussion groups on Yahoo and the
like. The reason is you can moderate the groups and keep out the trolls.
With newsgroups you cannot. I have not been to the Saturn group in quite
awhile since we did not have any issues with the SL1 and did not stop by
much until the daughter wanted to take a look at buying the Vue.

Or maybe people are just moving on to other makes of vehicles.

The other thing I noticed, is that most young people do not seem to know
about Internet newsgroups, what they are, and how to access them.
Schools really do a poor job of teaching computer technology.

JHMO

 

Usenet is very old school. However despite all the issues with Google
Groups, it does provide an interface to the newsgroups without which
there would be even fewer users of Usenet (given the spam from Google
Groups, maybe this would be a good thing to have fewer users).

As to this newsgroup in particular, there are two issues affecting it.
First, there are a lot less new Saturn owners than in the past. Second,
with the absorption of Saturn into GM as a division, having to share GM
platforms, there is less of a feeling of camaraderie than in the past.

I think another problem is all the mis-statements from Saturn
salespeople posting in the group. This is not the venue to try to
mislead people as Marx404 does (then he ironically complains that people
correcting him are trolls, what chutzpah!).

It was especially amusing to see him defend the "closing fee" that some
unscrupulous dealers are charging to get around Saturn's one-price
policy. I would guess from his tirade that his dealer is one of the ones
charging this fee that can add more than 1% to the final cost of the
vehicle. Saturn corporate should really crack down on this practice.
It's one thing to charge a $35 "doc fee" which is still a garbage fee,
but $199 is an outrageous garbage fee. It's like they're taking a page
from home mortgage closing costs. They're taking advantage of naive
buyers, which wasn't supposed to be the Saturn way.

People come here for advice on problems and help in purchasing. I was
glad to see that the recent Vue purchaser was able to use the advice I
and others provided regarding negotiating the price, since it probably
saved his daughter a significant chunk of money.

 

Ok, now I've had it. My apologies to everyone here (except Steven Scharf)
for this post, but I have had it with the personal attacks.

Steven, I want to thank you for outing yourself, that was the purpose of
this post. "All the salespeople"? How many do you count? What is with the
personal attacks, Steven?

For the good readers here, my OP was actually asking why twisted, lonely
people like SMS aka Steven Scharf have been so interested in going out of
their way to personally attack others. Not even Mr. Fact has stooped this
low. One simple Google search of "Steven Scharf" will show that he has been
attacking me personally since back in 2004, um, BEFORE I ever joined Saturn.
ex:

http://www.gmforum.com/online/showthread.php?t=32980&page=2

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&q=Steven+Scharf+++Saturn

Oh, and just for the record, I went to work for Saturn with the
encouragement of people on Saturn forums. I am a proud Saturn owner foremost
and above all and that is my main motive, Steven; not that I work for Saturn
as you so twist things around. (If I have ever defended anything it was your
personal attacks against me.) You, Steven have personal issues and I have
never done anything to cause you to personally attack me. I don't know you
or why you have been attacking me for all these years but everyone on the
web knows what kind of a lonely miserable loser you are.

Steven spends countless hours scouring Saturn and other sites (ex: cell
phone sites, etc...) for other people's posts then copies and pastes what he
can use to troll and harass them, then he takes it down one step further and
cross-posts them on many other forums in an attempt to slander them. Where
do you find the time to do this, Steven? You must not have a life or any
friends, you are too busy trolling and attempting to exploit other's
reputations. ex:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&q=Steven+Scharf+++marx404

Steven, read this clearly, though I doubt you have the capacity to absorb it
nor the tenacity to leave it alone afterwards without some "clever" retort.

For all the effort you have spent copying, pasting and editing my personal
posts, all the countless lonely hours you have wasted in front of your
computer cross-posting to GM, Saturn and other car sites slandering me and
all the lonely horrible hours sitting all by yourself in your little lonely
apartment wasted, misquoting me - what has it done for you? Are you a happy
person because of it? What have you gained by wasting so much of your life
personally attacking me?

What a lonely, lonely miserable twisted little person you are. Read what
others have said about you, Steven. Don't you get it? You have no friends.
Not one person who has read your cross-posts likes you or what you do. You
have gained no admiration from anyone, only a trail of enemies who wish that
you would go offline already and get a life. Being as nasty, miserable and
lonely as you are must really suck and you have nothing to gain by being
that way. Nobody likes it and nobody like you, Steven Scharf.

Have a good life, Steven Scharf. This is my last post to you or about you. I
see nothing constructive nor will I further waste a minute more of my life
reading or replying to your personal harassment.

 

I'm sorry, I wasn't done yet. I stumbled upon this golden nugget which is
even better than my post and explains everything that one needs to know
about SMS and his troll buddies. Peruse through the threads and notice what
Steven chooses to emphasize on, (if I worked for WallyMart would that make
my opinions more valid?) Notice how he posts one thing here and then replies
to the same copy and pasted quotes differently in another forum. Nuff said,
I'm done now, enough time wasted. I have a life and I love my Saturns.

http://talkaboutautos.com/group/rec.autos.makers.saturn/messages/160029.html

 

Ok, this is getting obsessive, I'm being a jerk now, but I can't help follow
this dirty trail of a troll called Steven M Scharf. I promise no more after
this, sorry. But for those curious about SMS, aka Steven M Scharf, Google
can help you to follow a trail to who he actually is and where this troll
resides. Seems he has been trolling for a long long time and has a admitted
history of "rating" items that he has neither owned nor used, including the
bicycles that he sells in California.

I googled Steven M Scharf, then added simple booleans like troll or cingular
(which he frequents that NG), which in turn led me to his bicycle website
and eventually quite a few aliases since 2002, possibly earlier.

The most intersting was simply googling his faux email ISP: linkearth.net
and only HIS name came up, which cross-referenced again, his bicycle
business. He even admits that he has never used what he posts about on his
site: "Since I have not ridden (or even seen) many of the bicycles listed, I
rely on comments from owners. " Must be ditto as far as all the other
products he slanders but has never used as well, like certain Canon camera
co. he has also bashed. I believ this all to be the same guy per Google
results and cross- referencing email addresses.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&q=+location

http://www.google.com/search?q=linkearth.net&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&start=10&sa=N

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&q=steven+M+scharf+++bicycle

http://www.nordicgroup.us/fold/

Google is your friend, Steven M Scharf is not.

Ok, I'm done playing.

 

I'm sure like me there are many here who read this NG everyday but don't
do a lot of posting. And yes, I know it's called lurking. I've even
posted a few times, when I knew the answer to a problem and some hadn't
beaten me to the punch I do own a Saturn, Y2K SL2 named The Sleek
Blue Beauty. So named in homage to Tom Magliozzi's '63 Dart, for all
you CarTalk fans. So marx404, don't give up hope, we're out here, the
Silent Majority of Non Trolling Lurkers (there's got to be a good
acronym in that).

 

Since 2005 he's been averaging more than 300 post a month on this
currently known Alias. I'm sure he's doing more than a thousand post a
month under different names. He wont even reply to my post anymore
because he knows I'll hand his ass to him if he tries to deny or further
distort any of it.

 

Either people have gotten pissed off with the trolls, given up on Usenet,
stopped buying Saturns or started drinking beer.

You pick.

 

idiot steve has been trolling the internet for the almost 11 years I have
been online.

google hin, some of his classic crap hasn't changed

 

11 years on teh intraweb and you still haven't gotten yourself a decent
newsreader?

/shakes head

 

I've been here for about 9 years now and I can say it goes in cycles.
Sometimes there are lots of trolls, sometimes none.

Please don't feed them.

Lane