Subject: Re: Deleting spams in the Pine newsreader

From: Michael Warner <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 13:27:34 GMT

On Mon, 11 Nov 1996, Ben Norwood wrote:

> 
> Is it possible to 'delete' a spam in one newsgroup and have it automatically
> deleted from the other newsgroups to which you are suscribed?
> 
> I know several dedicated newsreaders offer this feature, but as far as I
> know Pine [1] can't do it (yet!).
> 
> Would it also be possible in future versions of Pine to have a feature which
> allows you to 'delete' any articles in a newsgroup that have been spammed to
> at least x other newsgroups?
> 

I'd settle for only seeing crossposts the first time I read them.

Even if they're not spam.

-- 
Michael Warner
[email-masked]

---

From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 11:20:55 -0500

On Mon, 11 Nov 1996, Ben Norwood wrote:

> [...]

    You are correct: Pine cannot do this.  Pine does not do any
preprocessing of news or mail.  Some day it may, but some day is not
here.  However, Pine makes use of the same .newsrc file (on Un*x) that
other newsreaders do, so it is possible to fake your way around the
situation if one of those newsreaders is also installed on your system.

    For example, I follow a couple of newsgroups which -- sigh! -- get
a lot of heavy crossposting.  I run trn in a sort of batch mode with a
script which uses trn killfiles to update my .newsrc so that when I
start Pine, I only see a crosspost in one newsgroup and not the other. 
It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than nothing.  (I kill on some
othe criteria, as well.)

    As for spam, the technique will work provided you have a reliable
way of identifying spam at all so that you can put it in a killfile. 
You also have to have another newsreader available and learn a minimal
amount about it.

    Lack of killfiles, many people think, is one of Pine's biggest
functional shortcomings.  I agree.

Paul                             <[email-masked]>
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key 
Home Page:  http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart

---

From: Ben Norwood <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 11:54:03 +0000

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[1] I'm using v3.95