OT: Kill-files

[Scott]

As a matter of interest, do users of this group employ kill-files to filter postings that are of a repetitive and predictable nature or do they read them all in case there is something new?

[Tim Streater]

I killfile fatheads and trolls, yes. Life too short.

[The Natural Philosopher]

kill file.

Nothing of any interest has come out of e.g,. harry, dennis or Dave Plowman for so loing they simply get filtered out now

[Cursitor Doom]

Ditto. I use mine heavily and it saves an enormous amount of wasted time.

[David]

I kill file persistent offenders such as R Speed.

It can make threads confusing but in general it saves wading through repetitive crap.

My main issue is with worthy contributors like Brian Gaff who just can't resist responding to Trolls. Can't killfile them so I suffer one side of a pointless conversation (other Troll feeders are also available, unfortunately).

I wouldn't class repetitive and predictable as a reason to killfile someone. For example a certain J. Rumm repeatedly and predictably gives sage counsel. ;-)

I wouldn't mind if I could find a way to killfile the offenders and anyone who directly responds to them, but I don't have the time to learn the more advanced capabilities of the Pan newsreader.

Cheers

Dave R

[tabbypurr]

Rod makes a good point about once per 6 months. Is it worth reading 6 months of junk for that?

NT

[Harry Bloomfield]

It happens that Tim Streater formulated :

Me too!

[Scott]

What about his official 'stalker' :-)

[alan_m]

I tend now to just hit the ignore thread option on the first post.

[John Rumm]

I use a bunch of filters rather than a kill file as such. Either kill select threads or sub threads, or in many cases simply mark some posts as "read" so my software naturally skips over them while jumping to the "next" article.

I usually manually kill politics threads since they crop up from a wider range of people including some worth reading on other topics.

One filter with a bunch of known trolls. Another to kill anything from anonymous re-mailers. Plus one to catch any posts I have made, highlight them and also mark the thread as "watched" (then I can very easily switch to "watched threads with unread" and easily see any replies that I may need to address - even when posted to threads from months ago.

[Brian Gaff]

I use filtering of known idiots, I find though that the list grows ever longer and care must be taken not to accidentally block normal people who occasionally accidentally respond to trolls or boredom posters. Brian

[Another John]

I say, Tim!! That's thins it down a bit doesn't it?! :-D

There's one person I "killed" a couple of years ago, and I never missed him (I see his posts occasionally via threads quoting). Couple of others also 'killed'.

There's another couple whom I'd love to 'kill' sometimes, given some of the things they say, but their overall contributions (diy wisdom, or amusement generated by outrageous statements) well outweigh the negatives.

My threads are sorted by topic, and so all the OT:s are grouped together. Hence, I can skim the whole lot and Mark As Read within 10 seconds -- *that* saves a lot of time!

I've mentioned no names, but I will say that I love TNP (as he has become known), and also Plowperson (as TNP calls him (sometimes)), for their passion, and for the innumerable examples of DIY wisdom over all these years. And I love most everyone else too: it's like going into the local (when there _were_ locals!).

And of course Mr. Rumm is patron saint of this group!

John

[whisky-dave]

Nah can't be bothered I can work out which posts I want to read all by myself I don't need some algorithum telling me what to think or who is an idiot for any given subject.

In the mid 90s when I had a modem it made sense, in those days you'd select to just download the headers or just the subject title it was worth it then to save time.

[Graeme]

In message , Scott writes

I don't use a kill file, but don't read every post, either. I tend to 'mark read' the political threads once the first point has been made, and skim read other threads.

Posts I don't read are those unsnipped. I'm not scrolling down zillions of lines of quoted material even though there may be something worth reading right at the end.

[alan_m]

+1 I tend to give up on those very quickly.

[tabbypurr]

you miss a lot of the good content then. Tell your newsreader to collapse q uoted lines.

NT

[Chris J Dixon]

My newsreader jumps to the end with . Very handy.

Chris

[T i m]

And without having to learn - remember and find the right keys / key combinations to do that and a lot more, so can my mouse. ;-)

Like, highlight all the quoted text above the few lines of reply and make it disappear as soon as I start typing. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[John Rumm]

Damn, I think I have pulled ;-)

Alas judging by the name, probably not my type!!

[David]

Pan does that by default - all I see is "quoted text muted".

Occasionally have to un-mute for answers mixed up in line with the text.

Cheers

Dave R