I'm fed up with much of the junk on this newsgroup. I think a lot of the
stuff I have no interest in is cross posted from misc.survivalism. Is there
any way in the Outlook newsreader to set up a rule that if a posting is also
posted in that group it'll be marked "read"? I can live with some of this
stuff, but it's getting ridiculous. I don't want to exclude some of the
offenders directly. I like some of what Gunner, for example, posts, but a
lot of it is of no interest whatsoever, and takes considerable time to wade
through.

--
Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways)

I don't have to like Bush and Cheney (Or Kerry, for that matter) to love
America

--Switch to shell access; use tin or something similar and start
practicing writing killfiles. Heh.

--
"Steamboat Ed" Haas : Somehow related
Hacking the Trailing Edge! : to Lumpy Adams...
http://www.nmpproducts.com/intro.htm
---Decks a-wash in a sea of words---

In article ,
Bob Chilcoat wrote:
I'm fed up with much of the junk on this newsgroup. I think a lot of the
stuff I have no interest in is cross posted from misc.survivalism. Is there
any way in the Outlook newsreader to set up a rule that if a posting is also
posted in that group it'll be marked "read"?

I don't know about Outlook Express (as I never use a Windows box
for either news or e-mail, but blocking on cross-posting definitely
helps a lot. Here is part of my scores file for the newsgroup using
strn (a unix software package) as a newsreader:


================================================== ====================
killthreshold -50
-25 pattern newsgroups: .*,.*
-25 pattern newsgroups: .*,.*,.*
-25 pattern newsgroups: .*,.*,.*,.*

[ ... ]

+40 pattern subject: .*f/a.*
+40 pattern subject: .*f/s.*
+40 pattern subject: .*fa.*
+40 pattern subject: .*for sale.*
+40 pattern subject: .*fs.*
================================================== ====================

Lots snipped out. But the first line says that if any article
gets a score over a -50, it is "killed" (marked as already read).

To cross-post, you must have a comma in the "Newsgroups: "
header for each newsgroup beyond the first. So, the first line sets the
score to -25 if there is at least one comma (two newsgroups). The
second line, adds another -25 if there is a second comma (three
newsgroups), and the third line, yet another -25 if there are a total of
four newsgroups in the header. Without anything else, three newsgroups
are enough to reach the block threshold, but in addition there are rules
which give a positive bias to the score, so (from the shown rules
above), any of the variations above of for-auction or for-sale get the
scores lowered enough to make it below the kill threshold. (They also
get presented to me before other articles, as they are most likely to be
time-sensitive.

The character '.' matches any character, and adding a '*'
matches any number of the preceding, so ".*" allows any string before
and after the explicit string being checked for. (Standard unix REs
(Regular Expressions) used for pattern matching.)

One interesting artifact of this is that I will see a followup
if someone has dropped the cross-posting, so I suddenly see a thread-map
showing a large number of articles which I have never seen before, but
marked as read. :-)

I can live with some of this
stuff, but it's getting ridiculous. I don't want to exclude some of the
offenders directly. I like some of what Gunner, for example, posts, but a
lot of it is of no interest whatsoever, and takes considerable time to wade
through.

You might check whether OE allows any kind of pattern matching
and scoring -- though I have my doubts.

I also put directly into the killfile (a separate file from the
scorefile) specific "Subject: " headers which have gone political.

The advice that you get a (unix) shell account and use a unix
based newsreader is a good one.

I understand that Forte's "Agent" offers pretty good filtering
capabilities, and it *is* a Windows program, so it might do for you.

In any case, you will need to learn a bit about whichever
filtering system you pick up, to learn how to best use it.

Good Luck,
DoN.
--
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 ---

On Mon, 6 Dec 2004 16:56:35 -0500, "Bob Chilcoat"
wrote:

I'm fed up with much of the junk on this newsgroup. I think a lot of the
stuff I have no interest in is cross posted from misc.survivalism. Is there
any way in the Outlook newsreader to set up a rule that if a posting is also
posted in that group it'll be marked "read"? I can live with some of this
stuff, but it's getting ridiculous. I don't want to exclude some of the
offenders directly. I like some of what Gunner, for example, posts, but a
lot of it is of no interest whatsoever, and takes considerable time to wade
through.

I heard that there is a news group for OE from the Agent NG. I've yet
to get my OE mail into Forte Agent. Are you stuck with OE like I am
with this cable company?