Since I've recently had Outlook imposed on me, I subscribed to these two 'groups; however, all I've seen here are advertisements for conversion utilities between ost, pst, mbox, olm, and so on; these ad.s are posted
by throwaway or fake gmail accounts (often reposting without adding anything), so I can only assume dodgy.
Do any genuinely useful posts ever appear here? (If not, how does one go about calling for a rmgroup?)
Since I've recently had Outlook imposed on me, I subscribed to these
two 'groups; however, all I've seen here are advertisements for
conversion utilities between ost, pst, mbox, olm, and so on; these
ad.s are posted by throwaway or fake gmail accounts (often reposting
without adding anything), so I can only assume dodgy.
Do any genuinely useful posts ever appear here? (If not, how does one
go about calling for a rmgroup?)
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
Since I've recently had Outlook imposed on me, I subscribed to these
two 'groups; however, all I've seen here are advertisements for
conversion utilities between ost, pst, mbox, olm, and so on; these
ad.s are posted by throwaway or fake gmail accounts (often reposting
without adding anything), so I can only assume dodgy.
Do any genuinely useful posts ever appear here? (If not, how does one
go about calling for a rmgroup?)
Those are spam post by bots that look for keywords in articles, and then
puke out fake replies to those articles. You'll often notice the parent >article to which they reply is weeks or months old. They don't check
the date, just for keywords in posts to match what they are spamming.
Most of the bot spam is spewed through Google Groups. Filter out posts
that originated from Google Groups. Besides all the spam posts, you
also filter out the uber boobs, trolls, peuriles, malcontents, and other
crap posters using Google Groups.
I don't know if your choice of NNTP client supports regex. Below are my >filters to get rid of Google Gropers:
# Ignore posts made through Google Groups. >!setcolor(lime;green),ignore,markread Message-ID >{.*(\.googlegroups\.com>|\.JavaMail\.geo-discussion-forums@)} >!setcolor(lime;green),ignore,markread Header {^Path: >\S+\.googlegroups\.com(!not-for-mail)?$} >!setcolor(lime;green),ignore,markread Header {^User-Agent: G2}
# Ignore replies to Google Group posters. >!setcolor(lime;teal),ignore,markread Header {^References: >\S+(\bgooglegroups\.com>|\.JavaMail\.geo-discussion-forums@)}
# are the comment lines. I colorize the Google Groups posts. They are >flagged as ignored and marked read. I do not delete the posts, but just
flag them as ignored. The default view in my client is "Hide Ignored
Posts" (along with enabling an option to hide the entire subthread since
I also do not want to see replies to the unwanted posts - if I don't
want to see a post, I also don't want to see replies to it). I hide the >unwanted posts instead of delete. That way, I can switch to the "All >Messages" view to check my filters for false positives, and might have
to see what someone said if someone unfiltered in another subthread
refers to the unwanted post. The regex string is enclosed by braces.
Some of the regex filters require access to non-overview headers.
Message-ID and References are overview headers. You get those when the >client just gets the headers but doesn't download the entire message.
Path and User-Agent are non-overview headers. While some clients
support XPAT to do header matching on the server (to eliminate
downloading anything of an unwanted post), I have yet to find an NNTP
server that supports XPAT. It is a lot of overhead on the server to >accomodate the personal choice of view that individual users want to see
of newsgroups. Have the client download all of a message. Not a
problem in text-only newsgroups, but not recommended when retrieving
messages from binary newsgroups which typically have attachments to get >reconstructed over multiple posts. When retrieving the entire message,
all the headers (overview and non-overview) will be available, but
whether you can test on non-overview headers depends on the filtering >available within your client. If your NNTP client supports regex and
can test on ANY header's value, then it is trivial to get rid of Google
Gropers. If your client cannot test on non-overview headers, the ones
shown above that are overview headers are probably sufficient.
You'll get rid of a lot of spam, especially from keyword bots, by
getting rid of or hiding Google Gropers. Next would be to filter out
all the sewer (aka mixmin) posters that afflict lots of newsgroups, but >luckly not much anonymous/remailer posters are here.
The measure of whether a newsgroup is alive or not is not based solely
on the number of posts it has, but by getting responses. Someone else
must get interested in your post and feel they can contribute, so not
all those that inhabit a newsgroup will respond to a particular post.
Lots of users moved over to Microsoft's Answers forums when Microsoft >abandoned Usenet. Not everyone that has a question or problem will post
to Usenet. So, a newsgroup can appear quiet. It's not dead if you get >replies.
You will have to define your own filters for how you want to see Usenet.
On Wed, 10 Jun 2020 10:43:18 +0100, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
Since I've recently had Outlook imposed on me, I subscribed to these two
'groups; however, all I've seen here are advertisements for conversion
utilities between ost, pst, mbox, olm, and so on; these ad.s are posted
by throwaway or fake gmail accounts (often reposting without adding
anything), so I can only assume dodgy.
Do any genuinely useful posts ever appear here? (If not, how does one go
about calling for a rmgroup?)
You're right John, very little appears here. However if you ask a direct >question you will find there are lurkers who will pop up to answer.
It was from such an enquiry that I found CalDav Synchronizer to sync Google >Calendar to Outlook.
However much as I like the look and feel of Outlook (2010), it does not >render all mails correctly, does not support animations and as I send and >receive lots of photos, it does not make viewing them a rapid process.
True it is very professional, well it would be wouldn't it, but its high >security does not make it easy to use.
I find Outlook on my android phone, far and away the best email client, but >apart from the name, I see little connection between the two.
It will be no consolation to you that I have come to prefer Thunderbird as
my goto desktop client, with Outlook still installed fro emergencies
Ask you question and see who pops up. :-)
Good luck.Thanks!
VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:
[Is there any newsgroup I take where you don't also pop up (-:! (Yes - genealogy and archers.)]
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
Since I've recently had Outlook imposed on me, I subscribed to these
two 'groups; however, all I've seen here are advertisements for
conversion utilities between ost, pst, mbox, olm, and so on; these
ad.s are posted by throwaway or fake gmail accounts (often reposting
without adding anything), so I can only assume dodgy.
Those are spam post by bots that look for keywords in articles, and
then puke out fake replies to those articles. You'll often notice
the parent article to which they reply is weeks or months old. They
don't check the date, just for keywords in posts to match what they
are spamming.
Of the ones I'm seeing, they don't actually quote any previous post.
# Ignore posts made through Google Groups.
!setcolor(lime;green),ignore,markread Message-ID {.*(\.googlegroups\.com>|\.JavaMail\.geo-discussion-forums@)}
!setcolor(lime;green),ignore,markread Header {^Path: \S+\.googlegroups\.com(!not-for-mail)?$}
!setcolor(lime;green),ignore,markread Header {^User-Agent: G2}
# Ignore replies to Google Group posters.
!setcolor(lime;teal),ignore,markread Header {^References: \S+(\bgooglegroups\.com>|\.JavaMail\.geo-discussion-forums@)}
... but it doesn't have fancy colouring, ignoring, etc.; I can just
kill (not fetch) or otherwise.
I've set four rules (for the .general 'group) based on your above as /string/h, where string was what you had inside the {} (not including
the {}); I'll see how it gets on. (/h means, IIUIC, anywhere in the
headers.)
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:
[Is there any newsgroup I take where you don't also pop up (-:! (Yes -
genealogy and archers.)]
I used to monitor 52 newsgroups. I'm now down to 19. If I were to get
back into programming, I'd be inhabiting more newsgroups related to the >language(s) I'd be using.
Sometimes the trolls, malcontents, and flamers catch me off guard by >cross-posting to garbage groups, and I forget to check and edit out
those garbage newsgroups before I click Send. I filter out lots of
garbage newsgroups listed in the Newsgroups header, but sometimes the >crossposting is to legit but inappropriate or unrelated newsgroups.
Too bad Google doesn't throttle Usenet posts to some max threshold per
some number of minutes, like 1 per minute or 5 across 5 minutes.
Reading wouldn't be throttled, but sending should be. The spammers
would have to switch to clients that could slice up their spam flood to[]
stay under the throttling threshold which they could do but it would
further slow them down. Google isn't about controlling the amount of
spam that pukes out or originates from their Usenet archive.
Isn't Turnpike an NNTP client that is pushed by a particular Usenet
provider (Demon Internet maybe since its support newsgroup is >demon.ip.support.turnpike)? My recollection is Turnpike is, um, weak.
I've set four rules (for the .general 'group) based on your above as
/string/h, where string was what you had inside the {} (not including
the {}); I'll see how it gets on. (/h means, IIUIC, anywhere in the
headers.)
If you're going to block Google Gropers in the Outlook newsgroup, why
not filter those same spammers, uber boobs, malcontents, trolls, and
peuriles in all newsgroups?
The problem with testing across all headers is the test string could be
in a header that is not appropriate to the filter. Also, I've found
some regex filters must use (?-s) to limit the search scope to one
physical lines. Some headers are restricted to one physical line (e.g., >Path), but many are allow continuation lines (a leading space
character). If I don't limit some regex to matching in one physical
line, I've found them extending their search into the body of the
message. A message could be discussing anything, like mentioning Google >Groups in this message, so a regex filter that goes outside the headers,
and even in the wrong headers, could result in a false positive.
Maybe your client's /h directive limits searching before and up to the
blank line (a single newline character) that delineates the header
section from the message body. But I'm not sure that will look for the
match string within the appropriate header. The Subject header is in
the header section, so it's possible testing on a match string could get
a hit in the Subject header, but you were trying to test on the string
in the Path, From, or some header other than Subject. That is, you're
trying to filter on the source or poster of a message versus filters
that filter on the topic of the message via the Subject header.
You sure Turnpike cannot specify the header in which to search instead
of searching across all of them? Since Demon died, I'm not sure where
to find a user manual on it that would describe how to define kill
filters, especially how to specify a particular header in which to
search. Looks like something to ask in the Turnpike newsgroup.
If you're really interested, I can send you the manual; I've just
checked and it _does_ contain something on the custom rules - five or
six pages, that wouldn't look out of place in a document like the
Algol Report or Kernighan & Ritchie.
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