Re: alt.coffee's problems

Mike Easter wrote:

Then, the other part of the problem is that some people have no power
to
filter anything. Some here use GG to read and post, including GG email
digest. I have my own opinions about that GG usage.

Generally I use news.individual.net NIN as my newsserver and I do zero
newsreader filtering, as I prefer to do my personal filtering by ignoring
rather than an algorithm based filter. In rare circumstances I use a
proxy based filter Nfilter.

NIN is an excellently administered newsserver, using NoCeM cleanfeed
spamcancels to eliminate spam and hipcrime extremely well. Other free
newsservers do a good job of filtering as well; while some pay
newsservers such as giganews do little or no such filtering.

However, I just perused this group using GG which does no filtering. As
a result of my perusal, I see there is a problem in here (and many other
newsgroups) with what some refer to as GG spam. That is spam injected
via GG by posters who have logged in with a google account which might be
gmail-based or it might be some other and posted a spam. This GG spam is
also not filtered by GG -- so those who use GG to read this newsgroup are
subject to dealing with all of that GG spam in here.

Newsreaders discuss the best way to filter GG spam. In most groups that
is best done by filtering all of the posts which are posted/injected via
GG, which some refer to as the Usenet Improvement Project UIP^1. This is
one of the disadvantages 'legitimate' poster using GG to read and post to
usenet, because some/many readers are going to filter all your posts.
You will be invisible to many.

For any particular newsgroup, generally the best way to eliminate GG spam
if you aren't using a newsserver which filters it for you is to follow
UIP suggestions and filter the messages whose message-id is
googlegroups.com, not base your filter on a gmail.com From.

Then, if you are able to eliminate GG mid posts and/but you want to see
the posts of the 'good' GGers, if there are any in your group, then you
could whitelist the goodguys with your filter.

Some newsreaders can't filter on MID natively. Those who prefer to
continue to use such newsreaders such as OE & Tbird which have weak
filters can aid their newsserver with a proxy filter such as Nfilter if
they are windows. If they are linux and have such a problem they can use
leafnode.

However, if you use GG you are out of luck in filtering the spam or even
the non-spam noise in this group, so you have to do it mentally or find
out how to use a newsreader for your situation. Even a weak newsreader
can filter on a From if it is consistently a noise problem.


^1 http://improve-usenet.org/index.html What is the Usenet improvement
Project?


--
Mike Easter

.

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