On 9/8/23 09:50, Sn!pe wrote:

> New Subject (Was: Old Subject)
>
> This will cause competent User Agents to automatically discard the
> (Was: Old Subject) part of the header when following up but maintain
> continuity of Subject in the thread list. I have changed the Subject of
> this post as an example.
>

Thanks for the tip!
Thunderbird still shows the Was: when opening the message.

--
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

On 2023-09-08, Sn!pe <snipeco.2@gmail.com> wrote:
> This will cause competent User Agents to automatically discard the
> (Was: Old Subject) part of the header when following up but maintain
> continuity of Subject in the thread list.

Preesumably MacSoup (evidently the name of your user agent) does this?

Slrn isn't doing it; see Subject line. The (Was: ...) is intact.

Is there an RFC for this? I have the slrn code in a buildable state,
so I will take look if it's mentioned in the code anywhere.

In my opinion, if user agents were truly competent, then this entire
dance with (Was: ...) would be unnecessary.

It should be a feature of the user agent's display that when
a parent article P is available and has subject line X, and
a child article C has subject line Y, the agent itself should
display C's subject line as, perhaps:

Subject: Y
[Changed from: X]

or something similar.

Competence means doing something better in the UI with the available
data, produced by natural behavior, such as changing the subject without
mentioning the old subject in the subject line.

If the users have to obey some convention to produce data, that is not
really competent. Users won't.

--
TXR Programming Language: http://nongnu.org/txr
Cygnal: Cygwin Native Application Library: http://kylheku.com/cygnal
Mastodon: @Kazinator@mstdn.ca
NOTE: If you use Google Groups, I don't see you, unless you're whitelisted.

On 9/8/23 00:55, Keith Thompson wrote:
....
> I mostly filter out posts by certain users. Most of the recent spam has
> been from a relatively small number of posters.

I've been unwilling to do that, because they change names frequently.

On 9/8/23 07:55, candycanearter07 wrote:
....
> Is there an easy way to block users in thunderbird? I decided to
> switch over to it.

In the accounts window, select the account where you want to do the
filtering. Select "Manage message filters". Hit "New" to create a new
filter. Give a meaningful name to the filter. I generally have my
filters set up to run "Getting New Mail: Filter before Junk
Classification".
For my typical filters, I will want "Match any of the following", and
then I will select "From" "Contains" and the name of one of the people I
want blocked.
Alternatively, for some purposes, I prefer to use "Subject" "Contains"
and a key phrase.
In the bottom part of the filter, identify what you want done with the
message. I generally select "Delete Message". For some purposes, I will
choose "Ignore subthread", followed by "Delete Message".

When you're done, you should test the filter, if you can. If you've got
a newsgroup containing messages that should be removed by your filter,
select that group and select "Run now". In your account window, on the
bottom line, it should indicate how many messages were deleted.

On 9/8/23 02:09, Richard Harnden wrote:
> On 08/09/2023 05:12, James Kuyper wrote:
....
>> Spam on this newsgroup is at an all-time high, and oddly enough, the
>> vast majority of it seems to involve apparently illegal commerce, which
>> I would expect to draw the attention of law enforcement. It is getting
>> through both eternal-september's filters, and Google's. I've created a
>
> Google has a filter? Maybe they could turn it on.

Yes, it actually does. After receiving many complaints about spam in
this newsgroup, instead of shutting down the spammers, they decided to
shutdown their support for this newsgroup. For a short period of time it
wasn't possible to use Google Groups to post messages to this newsgroup.

> Filter on Message-ID containing googlegroups. You might loose some
> legit posts, but it catches 99% of the spam.

I still see too many legit users of GG that I don't want to drop.

candycanearter07 <no@thanks.net> wrote:

> On 9/8/23 09:50, Sn!pe wrote:
>
> > New Subject (Was: Old Subject)
> >
> > This will cause competent User Agents to automatically discard the
> > (Was: Old Subject) part of the header when following up but maintain
> > continuity of Subject in the thread list. I have changed the Subject of
> > this post as an example.
> >
>
> Thanks for the tip!
> Thunderbird still shows the Was: when opening the message.
>

T'Bird is an emailer with News bolted on as an afterthought, it isn't
always standards-compliant. If you check the Subject now you'll see
that my 'reader, MacSOUP, has truncated it as it should.

This is not to say that T'Bird is no good as a Newsreader, but there are
better ones.

--
^Ï^. Sn!pe <https://youtu.be/_kqytf31a8E>

My pet rock Gordon just is.

Kaz Kylheku <864-117-4973@kylheku.com> wrote:

> On 2023-09-08, Sn!pe <snipeco.2@gmail.com> wrote:
> > This will cause competent User Agents to automatically discard the
> > (Was: Old Subject) part of the header when following up but maintain
> > continuity of Subject in the thread list.
>
> Preesumably MacSoup (evidently the name of your user agent) does this?
>

See my adjacent reply to candycane.

> Slrn isn't doing it; see Subject line. The (Was: ...) is intact.
>
> Is there an RFC for this
>

I'm sure there is but don't ask me which one.

>
> I have the slrn code in a buildable state,
> so I will take look if it's mentioned in the code anywhere.
>
> In my opinion, if user agents were truly competent, then this entire
> dance with (Was: ...) would be unnecessary.
>
> It should be a feature of the user agent's display that when
> a parent article P is available and has subject line X, and
> a child article C has subject line Y, the agent itself should
> display C's subject line as, perhaps:
>
> Subject: Y
> [Changed from: X]
>
> or something similar.
>
> Competence means doing something better in the UI with the available
> data, produced by natural behavior, such as changing the subject without
> mentioning the old subject in the subject line.
>
> If the users have to obey some convention to produce data, that is not
> really competent. Users won't.
>

This is more like failure to use your car's turn indicators when making
a lane change.

--
^Ï^. Sn!pe <https://youtu.be/_kqytf31a8E>

My pet rock Gordon just is.

On 2023-09-09, Sn!pe <snipeco.2@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is more like failure to use your car's turn indicators when making
> a lane change.

Okay, sure, and so then to continue with the analogy, you're saying that
a competently implemented car will turn off someone else's turn signal
when it's no longer necessary. Or react to turn signals in some other way.

--
TXR Programming Language: http://nongnu.org/txr
Cygnal: Cygwin Native Application Library: http://kylheku.com/cygnal
Mastodon: @Kazinator@mstdn.ca
NOTE: If you use Google Groups, I don't see you, unless you're whitelisted.

Kaz Kylheku <864-117-4973@kylheku.com> wrote:

> On 2023-09-09, Sn!pe <snipeco.2@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
> > This is more like failure to use your car's turn indicators when making
> > a lane change.
> >
>
> Okay, sure, and so then to continue with the analogy, you're saying that
> a competently implemented car will turn off someone else's turn signal
> when it's no longer necessary. Or react to turn signals in some other way.
>

The change of Subject: is an invitation, not an order; it's like setting
a Followup-To: a different group. It's open to the responder to change
any header that they wish.

An analogy can be pushed too far; fun as it is, I think this diversion
has run its course.

--
^Ï^. Sn!pe <https://youtu.be/_kqytf31a8E>

My pet rock Gordon just is.

On 9/9/23 00:17, James Kuyper wrote:
> On 9/8/23 07:55, candycanearter07 wrote:
> ...
>> Is there an easy way to block users in thunderbird? I decided to
>> switch over to it.
>
> In the accounts window, select the account where you want to do the
> filtering. Select "Manage message filters". Hit "New" to create a new
> filter. Give a meaningful name to the filter. I generally have my
> filters set up to run "Getting New Mail: Filter before Junk
> Classification".
> For my typical filters, I will want "Match any of the following", and
> then I will select "From" "Contains" and the name of one of the people I
> want blocked.
> Alternatively, for some purposes, I prefer to use "Subject" "Contains"
> and a key phrase.
> In the bottom part of the filter, identify what you want done with the
> message. I generally select "Delete Message". For some purposes, I will
> choose "Ignore subthread", followed by "Delete Message".
>
> When you're done, you should test the filter, if you can. If you've got
> a newsgroup containing messages that should be removed by your filter,
> select that group and select "Run now". In your account window, on the
> bottom line, it should indicate how many messages were deleted.
>
Ok, I'll try it.
--
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

On 9/9/23 03:57, Sn!pe wrote:
> This is not to say that T'Bird is no good as a Newsreader, but there are
> better ones.

It's hard to find one for Linux that I can find in the aur and also has
offline reading mode. Pan doesn't have any option to download all unread
messages from what I know.

--
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

candycanearter07 <no@thanks.net> writes:

> On 9/9/23 03:57, Sn!pe wrote:
>> This is not to say that T'Bird is no good as a Newsreader, but there are
>> better ones.
>
> It's hard to find one for Linux that I can find in the aur and also has
> offline reading mode. Pan doesn't have any option to download all unread
> messages from what I know.

Pan claims to support offline reading. And Gnus certainly does. The
trouble with Gnus, though, is that if you are not already steeped in
Emacs, it might hard to get to grips with.

--
Ben.

On 9/9/23 16:08, Ben Bacarisse wrote:

> Pan claims to support offline reading. And Gnus certainly does. The
> trouble with Gnus, though, is that if you are not already steeped in
> Emacs, it might hard to get to grips with.
>

Claims. All it does is puts the message requests into the queue for when
you go back online.

--
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user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

In comp.misc candycanearter07 <no@thanks.net> wrote:
> On 9/9/23 03:57, Sn!pe wrote:
>> This is not to say that T'Bird is no good as a Newsreader, but there are
>> better ones.
>
> It's hard to find one for Linux that I can find in the aur and also has
> offline reading mode. Pan doesn't have any option to download all unread
> messages from what I know.

From the Linux perspective, that is out of scope for a newsreader.
Offline read/write mode is done with, as one option,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leafnode. Then you still use whatever
newsreader you like, but can do so offline as well.

On 9/9/23 16:28, Rich wrote:
> From the Linux perspective, that is out of scope for a newsreader.
> Offline read/write mode is done with, as one option,
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leafnode. Then you still use whatever
> newsreader you like, but can do so offline as well.
>

Ohhh, thanks for the tip! I'll check it out.

--
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user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

candycanearter07 <no@thanks.net> writes:

> On 9/9/23 16:08, Ben Bacarisse wrote:
>
>> Pan claims to support offline reading. And Gnus certainly does. The
>> trouble with Gnus, though, is that if you are not already steeped in
>> Emacs, it might hard to get to grips with.
>
> Claims. All it does is puts the message requests into the queue for when
> you go back online.

I installed it, connected to ES, subscribed to comp.lang.c, loaded two
days of headers, turned off threading, selected all of them and chose
"Save Articles...". After closing pan and turning off my net access I
was able to run pan and read this thread offline (I turned threading
back on). Is that what you mean by offline reading?

I turned threading off and on because I could not immediately see how to
select all messages rather than just the head messages show in the
header pane.

--
Ben.

On 9/9/23 16:57, Ben Bacarisse wrote:

> I installed it, connected to ES, subscribed to comp.lang.c, loaded two
> days of headers, turned off threading, selected all of them and chose
> "Save Articles...". After closing pan and turning off my net access I
> was able to run pan and read this thread offline (I turned threading
> back on). Is that what you mean by offline reading?
>
> I turned threading off and on because I could not immediately see how to
> select all messages rather than just the head messages show in the
> header pane.
>

It would take a while to select all and hit save on everything manually
if you're in a bunch of newsgroups.

--
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user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

candycanearter07 <no@thanks.net> writes:

> On 9/9/23 16:57, Ben Bacarisse wrote:
>
>> I installed it, connected to ES, subscribed to comp.lang.c, loaded two
>> days of headers, turned off threading, selected all of them and chose
>> "Save Articles...". After closing pan and turning off my net access I
>> was able to run pan and read this thread offline (I turned threading
>> back on). Is that what you mean by offline reading?
>> I turned threading off and on because I could not immediately see how to
>> select all messages rather than just the head messages show in the
>> header pane.
>
> It would take a while to select all and hit save on everything manually if
> you're in a bunch of newsgroups.

Looking at the menus I see that after clicking on a group you hit Ctrl-D
D Shift-S. There may be a way to do more that one group at a time.

But I am not advocating you use it; after all, I don't. I just didn't
like the implication that the documentation was not truthful. You can
read offline. It doesn't say you can do so effortlessly or even
conveniently!

--
Ben.

On 9/9/23 17:36, Ben Bacarisse wrote:
> But I am not advocating you use it; after all, I don't. I just didn't
> like the implication that the documentation was not truthful. You can
> read offline. It doesn't say you can do so effortlessly or even
> conveniently!
>

Yea, that's fair enough.

--
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user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

On 9/9/23 16:28, Rich wrote:
> From the Linux perspective, that is out of scope for a newsreader.

I don't know if I agree with that statement. While it's not something
necessary for a good newsreader, it definitely seems like an obvious
nice-to-have feature, allowing a user to configure offline reading from
within the actual app they're using, rather than reading manuals for
some other piece of software.

--
~rdh

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:

[...]

> Finally (for comp.lang.c only) , I find even more annoying than the spam
> the fact that people don't choose an appropriate Subject: for their posts.
> Naming a thread "bart again (UCX64)" is a poor choice anyway but it
> contains a long subthread on whether the closing brace of a function is
> reachable and whether a compiler should give a warning. It would certainly
> help if posts relevant to this reflected it in the Subject: .

[...]

One difficulty there is that a good subject requires a summary of the
content, a hard problem that schools have been failing to solve.
Notice, too, that lay people write the subject first and the message,
second, which is roughly the same as writing out the number first and
doing the arithmetic later.

So we can sort of blame that partly on the user interfaces. Somehow,
the subject line should come as a last step. That might be one of the
reasons lay people love the new proprietary software for conversations
--- they don't ask them to solve hard problems. On the contrary: they
force them not to solve them. (You don't have much to say? No problem:
we won't let you write more than n characters anyway.)

Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> writes:

> candycanearter07 <no@thanks.net> writes:
>
>> On 9/9/23 03:57, Sn!pe wrote:
>>> This is not to say that T'Bird is no good as a Newsreader, but there are
>>> better ones.
>>
>> It's hard to find one for Linux that I can find in the aur and also has
>> offline reading mode. Pan doesn't have any option to download all unread
>> messages from what I know.
>
> Pan claims to support offline reading. And Gnus certainly does. The
> trouble with Gnus, though, is that if you are not already steeped in
> Emacs, it might hard to get to grips with.

True. Even if you're stepped in EMACS, Gnus is still hard to get to
grips with. But surely the greatest feature of Gnus is precisely that
it runs in the GNU EMACS.

But speaking of offline reading, one feature of Gnus that I really like
is that when I open the first article on a thread, it downloads some
subsequent articles, so when I ask for the next it is already there for
me.

On Sun, 03 Dec 2023 13:01:28 -0300, Julieta Shem wrote:

> So we can sort of blame that partly on the user interfaces. Somehow,
> the subject line should come as a last step. That might be one of the
> reasons lay people love the new proprietary software for conversations
> --- they don't ask them to solve hard problems. On the contrary: they
> force them not to solve them. (You don't have much to say? No problem:
> we won't let you write more than n characters anyway.)

Even worse, these modern interfaces often /force/ people to post,
inundating the medium with trivial chatter. ("You don't have anything to
say? Too bad; you need to post /something/ in order to keep your account
open.")

--
Lew Pitcher
"In Skills We Trust"

Lew Pitcher <lew.pitcher@digitalfreehold.ca> writes:

> On Sun, 03 Dec 2023 13:01:28 -0300, Julieta Shem wrote:
>
>> So we can sort of blame that partly on the user interfaces. Somehow,
>> the subject line should come as a last step. That might be one of the
>> reasons lay people love the new proprietary software for conversations
>> --- they don't ask them to solve hard problems. On the contrary: they
>> force them not to solve them. (You don't have much to say? No problem:
>> we won't let you write more than n characters anyway.)
>
> Even worse, these modern interfaces often /force/ people to post,
> inundating the medium with trivial chatter. ("You don't have anything to
> say? Too bad; you need to post /something/ in order to keep your account
> open.")

That's wild. (I had no idea.) Some things such as education and
communities can never be guided by commerce. It has to come from within
the community itself. If it ever becomes commercial, then we should
backtrack.

On 03/12/2023 16:01, Julieta Shem wrote:
> One difficulty there is that a good subject requires a summary of the
> content, a hard problem that schools have been failing to solve.
> Notice, too, that lay people write the subject first and the message,
> second, which is roughly the same as writing out the number first and
> doing the arithmetic later.
>
> So we can sort of blame that partly on the user interfaces. Somehow,
> the subject line should come as a last step. That might be one of the
> reasons lay people love the new proprietary software for conversations
> --- they don't ask them to solve hard problems. On the contrary: they
> force them not to solve them. (You don't have much to say? No problem:
> we won't let you write more than n characters anyway.)

The problem there is that when you are reading the message you want the
title (summary) first.

It's quite valid to say you should write it later - but that would
result in a different layout for reading and writing, which would be
confusing.

For me having the title first works most of the time. It's a one line
summary of what I want to talk about. I then expand on it in the body.
Occasionally I go back and change the title - but not often.

Andy