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Another filter question

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  Another filter question Sticks <Wolverine01@charter.net> - 2021-04-25 18:51 -0500
    Re: Another filter question VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2021-04-25 20:05 -0500
      Re: Another filter question Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2021-04-28 10:40 -0700
        Re: Another filter question VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2021-04-28 15:03 -0500
        Re: Another filter question Miguel Tomar Nogueira <mnogueira@mail.telepac.pt> - 2021-05-12 01:09 +0000
    Re: Another filter question "J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> - 2021-04-26 03:41 +0100
    Re: Another filter question Miguel Tomar Nogueira <mnogueira@mail.telepac.pt> - 2021-04-26 06:19 +0000
    Re: Another filter question Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2021-04-26 08:12 +0100
      Re: Another filter question Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2021-04-26 08:16 +0100
    Re: Another filter question Sticks <Wolverine01@charter.net> - 2021-04-28 17:34 -0500

#241 — Another filter question

So how do I use the Newsgroups portion of the header to filter on any 
post that has more than 2 groups in it?

I'm guessing if I use a comma (,) I could filter if it has more than 
one, but for now I'd like to try two.  That should eliminate most of the 
blatant shitheads.

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#243

Sticks <Wolverine01@charter.net> wrote:

> So how do I use the Newsgroups portion of the header to filter on any 
> post that has more than 2 groups in it?
> 
> I'm guessing if I use a comma (,) I could filter if it has more than 
> one, but for now I'd like to try two.  That should eliminate most of the 
> blatant shitheads.

Don't use Thunderbird anymore, but I recall it could test using regular
expressions.  If so, you can probably use a couple that I use:

^Newsgroups: .+,.+,.+,.+,
^FollowUp-To: .+,.+,.+,.+,

Besides excessive cross-posting using the Newsgroups header, I also
trigger on posters that attempt to get replies excessively cross-posted.
For me, I filter on more than 4 cross-posted newsgroups hence why the
regex looks for 4 commas with 1, or more, characters between each.  The
above is testing on the header names, and headers start in column 1
which is why I anchored the string to column 1 (using the ^ special
character).  Headers must have 1, or more, whitespaces after the colon;
however, I don't recall seeing where more than 1 space was used, so I
just include the 1 space between header: and headerValue.  If I did
encounter someone using more than 1 space after the colon, I'd replace
the space character with /s+ (one, or more, spaces).

I filter on "more than 4" cross-posts because, for example, there are
multiple Windows newsgroups to which an inquiry could be relevant.
However, more important is I check if the Newsgroups or FollowUp-To
headers contain any "garbage" newsgroups, like flaming, proselytizing,
kook, warez, soc.*, and other groups that I would never participate, so
I would never bother to reply to someone who is highly likely trying to
incite reactions from unrelated newsgroups.

I don't remember if FollowUp-To is an overview header.  Suspect it
isn't.  I can test on ALL headers because I configure my NNTP client to
download not just the overview header (and have to click on an article
to then download it all), but to download the entire article (headers
and body).  That lets me test on everything, because both the overview
and non-overview headers get downloaded.  I only participate in text
only newsgroups, so I'm not concerned about the time to download the new
articles (the first retrieve will be all new articles, and take a long
time for a busy newsgroup, but subsequent polls for new articles should
only list a few).   If you do binary newsgroups, you don't want to
configure your client to download entire articles.  

Even the Newsgroups header might be a non-overview header.  To check,
run "telnet <nntpServer> <port>" and run the "list overview.fmt" command
which lists which headers the NNTP server considers overview headers.
For me using individual.net, Newsgroups is not an overview header, and
another reason I download entire messages, so I can test on any header
whether overview or non-overview.

If Thunderbird does not support regex (regular expressions) in its
filters, you're screwed unless you find an extension that add regex to
Tbird, like FiltaQuilla.

https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/filtaquilla/

No idea if the extension forces a full-message download if you specify a
non-overview header.  If you don't know regex (typically the PCRE
version), then don't bother.  You can find lots of online tutorials,
snatch what others have used, and learn as you go, but regex is really
extensive on what it can test.  I've been using it for many years, and
still I have to learn something new to get a filter to work (providing
the regex parser and interpreter in the program supports all of regex).

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#365

VanguardLH wrote:
> Don't use Thunderbird anymore, but I recall it could test using regular
> expressions.

Definitely not; no regex, no wildcards, no scoring.  That's a big Tb 
weakness compared to 'real' news agents.

-- 
Mike Easter

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#372

Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> wrote:

> VanguardLH wrote:
>
>> Don't use Thunderbird anymore, but I recall it could test using regular
>> expressions.
> 
> Definitely not; no regex, no wildcards, no scoring.  That's a big Tb 
> weakness compared to 'real' news agents.

Then, I guess, a TBird user is stuck testing if the FiltaQuilla
extension still works.  Its extension page says it has been updated to
work with Tbird 78.  

But this still depends on whether or not Tbird retrieves both overview
and non-overview headers to allow testing on non-overview headers.
Since the client adds the Newsgroups header, often it is not an overview
header.  The user would need to configure Tbird to download ALL of every
message (headers+body) to have access to the non-overview headers.  

Even if Tbird supported XPAT, few NNTP servers do since that incurs a
lot of overhead of doing searches at the server that a more capable
client should be doing.  Downloading ALL of a message grants access to
ALL headers (overview and non-overview).  If you're into porn (seems the
major use of binary newsgroups), you wouldn't be using Tbird, anyway,
and you certainly would not want Tbird downloading complete articles.
However, if you only visit text-only newsgroups then downloading
complete articles is not a big deal, especially after the initial
retrieve on subscribing to a new newsgroups and thereafter the downloads
are incremental (only new articles are retrieved).

If after configuring Tbird to retrieve complete articles, that doesn't
mean Tbird grants access to all headers within an article.  The
FiltaQuilla extension is useless if Tbird doesn't let you test on both
overview and non-overview headers.

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#475

Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> writes:

> VanguardLH wrote:
>> Don't use Thunderbird anymore, but I recall it could test using regular
>> expressions.
>
> Definitely not; no regex, no wildcards, no scoring.  That's a big Tb
> weakness compared to 'real' news agents.

Theoretically, you can run local server (Hamster for Windows, for
example) and do regex matching using internal scripts of the local
server software or external scripts operating directly on article
spool.

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#244

On Sun, 25 Apr 2021 at 18:51:06, Sticks <Wolverine01@charter.net> wrote 
(my responses usually follow points raised):
>So how do I use the Newsgroups portion of the header to filter on any 
>post that has more than 2 groups in it?
>
>I'm guessing if I use a comma (,) I could filter if it has more than 
>one, but for now I'd like to try two.  That should eliminate most of 
>the blatant shitheads.

I don't know TB's syntax, but I _think_ it would be difficult to filter 
on _only_ two; as you say, detecting a comma (in either To: or 
Followup-To:) will detect two _or more_. (Which, as you say, will 
eliminate most.)

If you only want to detect ones aiming at three _or more_, then 
searching for two commas (with wildtext between - that would be ,.*, in 
Turnpike - a post in this thread suggests it might be ,.+, in TB) should 
work; specifying _exactly_ three (i. e. two and only two commas) would I 
think be difficult.
-- 
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

War doesn't determine who's right. War determines who's left.

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#246

Sticks <Wolverine01@charter.net> writes:

> So how do I use the Newsgroups portion of the header to filter on any
> post that has more than 2 groups in it?
>
> I'm guessing if I use a comma (,) I could filter if it has more than
> one, but for now I'd like to try two.  That should eliminate most of
> the blatant shitheads.

Are you already downloading all the headers? If not, you might want to
filter on Xref. Xref is usually in overview, while Newsgroups is not.

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#247

Sticks wrote:

> So how do I use the Newsgroups portion of the header to filter on any 
> post that has more than 2 groups in it?
> 
> I'm guessing if I use a comma (,) I could filter if it has more than 
> one, but for now I'd like to try two.  That should eliminate most of the 
> blatant shitheads.

Not sure you can ... the "contains a comma" method does work for two or 
more groups, but there isn't a built-in regex search, and I'm not sure 
if any of the regex addons still work?

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#248

Andy Burns wrote:

> I'm not sure if any of the regex addons still work?

FiltaQuilla 3.1 claims to work again with TB78

<https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/filtaquilla/versions/>

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#378

On 4/25/2021 6:51 PM, Sticks wrote:
> So how do I use the Newsgroups portion of the header to filter on any 
> post that has more than 2 groups in it?
> 
> I'm guessing if I use a comma (,) I could filter if it has more than 
> one, but for now I'd like to try two.  That should eliminate most of the 
> blatant shitheads.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.  I decided to just use a single 
comma and only allow what is posted to the group I am reading.  I can 
live with that.

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