Thread: Filters
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Old July 20th 03, 12:41 PM
John Beaderstadt
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Filters

I've posted similar messages in reply, but Julian's post about the
level of crap in the group made me think this deserves its very own
thread and Subject.

I seem to have succeeded in eliminating virtually all flames, spam and
sporgeries from my newsreader, not just in ssh, but in all my
subscribed groups. My newsreader's (Forte Agent) own killfiles take
out individual persistent flamers. Spammers and sporgers are dealt
with by a dedicated usenet filtering program called News Proxy (aka
nfilter), which accommodates Regular Expressions. REs do take a
little getting used to, but I was able to write effective filters just
by adapting the included examples. You can filter on virtually
anything in the header; to filter out those with morphing IDs, for
instance, you can filter on the Path statement, looking for their
server. NP works invisibly in the background; once it and your
newsreader are configured, you can put NP in your system tray and
forget it exists.

Here's the News Proxy FAQ, from which you can link to the download and
other pages: http://www.nfilter.org/faq.html

Here are the only two filters I've had to write for NP:

#1
* drop xref:*:*:*:*

#2
* drop Path:*gilgamesh*
* drop Path:*dizum.com*
* drop Path:*anonymous*
* drop Path:*remailer*

#1 takes out anything posted to more than two groups. #2 is written
to take out anything where the Path includes specific anonymous
remailers. So far, #2 hasn't been tested yet, apparently because
those who use remailers like to crosspost, as well, so #1 has
collaterally knocked out 100% of everything that has been remailed.

The tools exist, folks!


---------------
Beady's Corollary to Occam's Razor: "The likeliest explanation of any phenomenon is almost always the most boring."