The problems in comp.lang.c

Dear everyone

I've been lurking in this group for a few weeks now. Originally I had a
question to ask (about atomic/threadsafe operations in C), and I wanted
to get the feel of the newsgroup first. In fact I've got to know it well
enough that I realize there's no point in even asking my question, which
would be vilified as "off topic".

 From what I have observed, this group has big problems. There are some
positive posters here (I'd especially like to thank jacob navia for his
very interesting and useful long posts on stacks and debuggers), but
there seem to be many many more people here who post only to be
negative.

The main example seems to be Richard Heathfield - I don't know what the
history of it is, but he obviously has a deep personal hatred of jacob
navia, and this dominates his posting. Most of his insults are pretty
puerile, but this constant negativity really seems to bring down the
atmosphere.

Then there are lots of other people with a bizarre view of what
is "on topic" and "off topic", where fundamental concepts of C are (for
their own completely arbitrary reasons) verboten in this group. This
stupidity will drive away ordinary C programmers who might want to share
their knowledge and experience!

I wish people would see what a useful resource this group could be if it 
weren't for a noisy minority of morons who spoil it for everyone else 
with their negativity and aggression towards other views.

Jeff