[Gllug] Scoring Usenet messages.

[Bruce Richardson]

On Tue, Apr 16, 2002 at 01:45:20PM +0100, Colin wrote:
> KNode has a feature to 'score' messages.
> 
> Does anyone use scoring?  How does it work and where is it applicable?

A good news client will let you score on a wide range of criteria (with
regexes, of course) including (at a minimum) any header that you might
find in a Usenet post.  

Scores can usually be positive or negative and rules can be absolute or
cumulative.  You can use this to set thresholds and have your client not
show you posts that score under one limit and/or flag posts that score
above another.

I use slrn and have rules that killfile 

* Likey spam subjects
* Extremely annoying people
* Posts that are cross-posted on more than 3 groups (almost always the
  sign of a troll and if not a troll then certainly a moron).
* Posts whose subject does not match the ng subject-tagging convention
  (where the ng has such)

In some cases I have rules set to killfile offending posts but not
responses to them.

I also mark up

* messages that respond to my own posts (and any further responses)
* topics I am interested in (usually ng-specific)
* messages from people who's posts I find worthwhile

The more complex rules (e.g. multiple cross-posts or replies to me) are
not built in to slrn but are constructed with regexes and combinations
of rules.  Other news clients do have built-in rules to cover such
things.


Interestingly, your mail client may also be capable of scoring messages
(Mutt certainly can) or of flagging particular types of messages.  I
don't score mail but I do use Mutt's capabilities to colour-flag
responses to my own posts, new messages, old messages etc.

> 
> (At no point should this message be considered a test message - I'm sure 
> the list is just quiet)

Have I by chance pontificated to no good end?  Well, maybe it's of
interest to someone.

-- 
Bruce

You can fool some of the people all the time, you can fool all of
the people some of the time but you can never fool your mother.
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