Daniel wrote:
Almost as to be expected, on various UseNet groups, there are idiots
that *need* to be ignored and this used to be accomplished by the use of
Filters (Tools->Message Filters).
Lately, it seems to me that the Filters are not achieving anything ....
tonight I've created two new filters (in an effort to get rid of a pain
in the butt!)
Say, for example, tonight's clown was "Fred Smith <stuffgoin...@yahoo.com>"
First off, for the entire UseNet server account, I created a filter
called "Smith" and set it up for "From" "contains" "Smith" (Yes, the
capital "S" was correct). Clicked "OK" and then on the "Message Filters"
screen, I clicked "Run Now" ...... and nothing happened!
So then I created a filter called "gon" and set it up for "From"
"contains" "stuffgoingon" (again, case is correct). Clicked "OK" and
then on the "Message Filters" screen, I clicked "Run Now" ...... and
nothing happened!
So then I quit the "Message Filters" screen and went to Tools->Run
Filter on Folder ..... and nothing happened!
So are Filters still usable on news groups in SeaMonkey (as shown in my
sig file??
Filters do work, yes, but they often take some tuning to get them to
work correctly.
Remember that a filter has two parts, the logic portion and the action
portion. The logic portion is essentially a function of search, where
you identify which messages that you want to pay attention to. The
action portion specifies what you want to do with the messages that are
found.
In your particular case, it's likely that you're having problems with
the logic portion, of getting your search criteria correct.
Beyond other suggestions mentioned in this thread, a couple of things
that can help:
1) If you're trying to filter messages that show a specific sender
address, take a look at a message from that sender, and right-click on
the sender's address, shown in the From: line. One of the options in the
drop-down menu is "create filter from ", which will create a filter
based on that address, and the default filter offered will be to search
for messages where the From: line is an exact match of the specified
address. That will identify messages from that particular sender. If
you want address patterns (e.g. a domain) or other addresses to be used
in the same rule, then you can tinker with the search terms.
2) For Usenet messages, make sure you're using action options that are
consistent with a news server. The ones that typically will give you the
most benefit are "Mark as read", "ignore thread" and "ignore
sub-thread". "Delete Message" won't work on a news server if you're not
replicating all your newsgroup messages locally. If you are
replicating, it may work, although that would happen only after you've
fully downloaded the message first. And no, I've never tried that
particular course. "Mark as Read" and "ignore subthread" generally work
best if you have the newsgroup's viewing options set to show only
threads with unread messages.
3) If you're trying to do more advanced filtering, it's best to take a
look at the raw data that you're trying to filter -- use ctrl-U to view
the entire message, and look at header data. From there, the filtering
tool offers a handful of headers that are commonly used for filtering
(From:, Subject:, Size, etc.), but if you choose "Customize", then you
can filter on any header that's in a valid message. Thus, even if
headers such as X-Mozilla-News-Host:, NNTP-Posting-host,
X-Usenet-provider, or others may seem to be somewhat exotic, but they
can be useful for accurately identifying problem senders (including ones
that have multiple identities) or even discarding stuff from specific
servers or providers that seem to have a lot of people that you want to
ignore.
A related tip -- some message may have a Sender: header, and sometimes
looking for content there may be more reliable than searching on From:
lines.
4) After you're created a filter, and before you close out the Message
Filters dialog, go to the upper right corner of that dialog, and click
on the Filter Log button, then tick the box titled "enable log". This
one will allow you to track which messages your filters are identifying
(Date, filter name, sender name, subject line, and posting date of the
message). This one has limits, but it at least allows you to track where
you're getting hits, and it's probably more useful in identifying rules
that are catching too much stuff. However, if you're seeing a message
that you don't want, and there's nothing turning up in the logs, then it
means that the logic portion of your filter isn't identifying the
message in question correctly. If you're using logging to help with
debugging, that's a place where it may be preferable to use one filter
per sender, rather than trying to filter multiple senders with the same
filter.
5) I noted above that the logic portion of a filter is essentially an
application of the search tool. Something that you can do to help with
building/tuning filters, even if you don't have live messages to filter
is to right-click on a folder, and select "search". This process works
well for POP and IMAP, but I think that doing it on a news server will
return an error, and that's something that is limited by how NNTP
servers work. That might also be something that's workable if you're
replicating (at least temporarily) your news articles to local storage.
Hope this helps.
Smith
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