OK - here's a new thread to sort this mess out folks...


Clearly some people have not grasped the entirety of this issue
and have made suggestions based upon incomplete understandings or
solutions which are impractical because they require a lot of work
or have other undesirable consequences.

So I'll set it out again as clearly as I can. Please bear in mind
that it was not *me* who raised the news client problem in this
debate, I simply politely nagged at Mike Dee for posting and
changing the Subject title, as did another poster before me.

I did not intend my original post to start an abuse war. Some of
you folks started that...Dan C and sittingduck etc.
===================================================

Anyway, ISTM there are several related problems:

Problem 1:
when poster B responds to a thread started by poster A which has
never appeared on my message list because it's already dropped by
my pre-Agent filters. I will see the post from B with a Subject
title beginning *Re:*. This typically happens to Google threads
because I have many Googlers in my drop filters (not all).

The only solution to rid myself of the new thread from poster B is
to hit the Ignore button, and if any other poster responds to the
original post from A, they'll also be Ignored in that thread. This
procedure works. Of course if nobody responds to poster A, I'll
never see any part of it. That's the ideal situation.

Afaik there is no practical alternative to this procedure.

Rom's (or was it Frank's?) idea that I could remove my drop filter
for that category of posters and use a 'flag' filter instead, and
then use Agent to Ignore those flagged posters doesn't work because
Agent can't filter *only* on threads started by such posters. IOW
it would filter out *any* thread where any flagged poster responded,
meaning that if poster A responded in any other thread, the whole
thread would get Ignored as soon as his post hit Agent. That's not
satisfactory.


Problem 2:
This is similar to Problem 1 except that the response from poster B
also contains a change of Subject title and may not be the first
response to the original thread started by A. That is what happened
in this situation.
I had already Ignored the first response from somebody and then
Mike Dee's response appeared because he changed the Subject title.
His response appeared as another new *Re:* thread.
If his response had been a regular one it would have joined the
thread already marked Ignore and I would never have seen it.
That's an observation of Mike's post, not a criticism. Right.

But as said, he changed the Subject title.
That meant that I had to hit Ignore for 2 threads. It could easily
be any number of times if others responded and also changed the
Subject title.


Problem 3:
This is really the same as 1 and 2 above but scaled up for sporge.

Some groups (including this one) are being hit with huge quantities
of sporge and I am filtering it on various header entries. I drop
these posts and they're not downloaded into Agent. Thus, I only see
any part of them if someone chooses to respond. Then I see a new
thread with Subject starting *Re:*

Someone suggested that I should use the References: header to filter
out unwanted responses to such posts (also applies to posts in 1 and
2 above). Sadly they did not tell me how I can use such a filter
when I don't know which posts *might* be responded to and don't
have the original MIDs available. There are also literally hundreds
of potential posts like this every day.
Creating filters for hundreds of sporge threads in this situation is
impractical beyond belief.


Now, that's as clear as I can make it folks and I repeat my earlier
view that I don't believe there is a practical and workable solution
to it, aka I'm not aware of any news client that does mindreading!

Give it your best shot...

HTH
.

Relevant Pages

  • [any reader] Filter, plonked user?
    ... message from a poster, but also removes all reply's to that poster? ... like the ability to filter based on content. ... Most but not all folks include the username in the response citations. ... with the count of groups so I kill every post with more than 3 groups. ...
    (news.software.readers)
  • Re: [any reader] Filter, plonked user?
    ... message from a poster, but also removes all reply's to that poster? ... like the ability to filter based on content. ... Most but not all folks include the username in the response citations. ... with the count of groups so I kill every post with more than 3 groups. ...
    (news.software.readers)
  • Re: OK - heres a new thread to sort this mess out folks...
    ... then use Agent to Ignore those flagged posters doesn't work because ... Agent can't filter *only* on threads started by such posters. ... This is similar to Problem 1 except that the response from poster B ...
    (news.software.readers)
  • Re: spam
    ... only one who cannot follow: 'just filter out gmail' as a concept :-) ... The previous poster just explained exactly what to do, ... Combined with the online help of Agent, you should be able to work this out. ...
    (uk.railway)
  • Re: spam
    ... only one who cannot follow: 'just filter out gmail' as a concept :-) ... The previous poster just explained exactly what to do, in Agent. ...
    (uk.railway)