I usually just filter silently, without a <plonk> post. When I do
(occasionally) publicly plonk somebody, it's because of particularly
egregious posting. For instance, if somebody makes incorrigibly racist
postings, I might make a public plonk post. However, if they just post
in a way that annoys me (for instance, somebody who can't be bothered to
quote what they're replying to), I just killfile silently.

I simply killfile without <plonk>ing.  There's no point giving the a$$holes
I'm killfiling the attention that they're obviously seeking.

on Mon, 27 Dec 2004 12:49:37 -0800, Lurker <lurker.poultrytamer@gmail.com>
wrote:

-----
Bev

That's how I see it, too.  I killfile someone quietly and just get to
ignore their annoying behaviour.  When a thread turns into (or starts
out as) responses to someone annoying with no other content (such as
Chung's 2PD) I just kill the whole thread and go on my way.

Much less stressful for me, and people who really ENJOY that kind of
thing can still do their stuff.

Aramanth

I've very rarely publicly plonked someone, although my filters are
certainly FULL of plonked people & subjects.  I sometimes RECOMMEND that
someone be plonked if the poster is an obvious a.shole or otherwise
annoying, though.  I don't do it to piss of the offending poster, though
-- it's more to make life easier for someone else who is getting worked
up over something (and easier for me so I don't have to keep reading the
angry responses.  An angry PLONK! might make someone feel better to post
it, but it rarely has any effect on the plonkee other than to make them
feel "special", so what's the point?  It's certainly not going to change
THEIR posting habits.  I DO sometimes point out trolls, but I consider
that to be a different category.  

There was ONE occasion where I deliberately mentioned, more as an
observer than a participant in an ongoing discussion, that I had given
up two weeks earlier and finally killfiled someone.  I had not said
anything at the time I "plonked" her because I'm something of a long-
standing net celebrity in that group, and I knew that if *I* made a
point of it, other people would too, just because *I* did, and I wasn't
comfortable having that kind of influence in what would amount to a
powerplay, especially since the poster wasn't an a.shole so much as she
was just habitually negative and tiresome and her posts almost ALWAYS
left me feeling vaguely cranky, and who needs THAT?  They were made more
tiresome, however, when other people dragged them out.  Sure enough,
after I calculatingly (but casually) mentioned that I had killfiled her
two weeks earlier (so it was not in the heat of the moment of the
CURRENT discussion), she was effectively ostracized and after about a
week she quit posting there altogether because no one would respond to
her posts.  I did so KNOWING that that would be the probable outcome,
but the group is much more pleasant to read now, so I felt then AND now
that I made the right decision.  It WAS (and still is) kind of
unsettling, though, to find that my intuition about the power of MY
opinion in that group was correct.  Newsgroup dynamics can be very
interesting to observe.  

I don't HAVE that kind of power/influence in any OTHER newsgroup, so I
doubt many people would be influenced by or even care if I DID plonk
someone, so what's the point?  To quietly filter and move on seems to
the best coarse of action in most cases.  

Slightly OT-how do I killfile w/ Mozilla Thunderbird?