On 2011-09-09, wrote:
I've been off this group for quite a while.Now I find myself sorry to
have rteturned. I do recollect some lively (and short) rants from both
left and right. But this has gotten ridiculous. Can anyone recommend a
newsgroup where metalworking posts are still made? I can no longer
wade through the political garbage looking for what little interesting
and educational stuff is left on a site that was supposed to be about
metalworking.

Get a newsreader with good killfile capability and learn to use
it.

I start up on a typical evening with 300-600 unread articles
showing before the killfile does its thing, and wind up with 30-60
articles to actually deal with.

One of the starting points is set up to discard all articles
with more than one or two newsgroups in the "Newsgroups: " header. Then
add specific individual posters to the killfile, and finally add
particular words to the "Subject: " blocking. A good start is the names
of political individuals -- you'll see who to add as time goes on, and
certain words which would not be used in discussing metalwork, but would
in various political rants.

My newsreader ("slrn", which is a unix-based newsreader) has the
ability to set expiration time for various blocking -- so some subjects
can be automatically removed from the filtering when the discussion is
likely to have expired. I typically set 90 to 360 days of expiration
time.

Sure -- new things have to be added from time to time, but
overall it makes it a pretty usable newsgroup.

Good Luck,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---