Newsgroups: sci.math, sci.physics, sci.bio, sci.chem, sci.geo.geology, sci.astro, news.misc
Followup-To: news.software.readers
From: hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil (Dan Hoey)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1993 21:20:28 GMT
Subject: Careful kill files (was Re: PHYSICS AND MATH EXPLANATION ...)

cyeom...@ms.uky.edu (Charles Yeomans) asked how to put authors in a
KILL file, and b...@guitar.ucr.edu (john baez) replies:

> This is probably newsreader-dependent, but for rn I use, e.g., /plutonium/hj
> This kills articles that he posts, but not that merely contain his name.

Unfortunately, that also kills articles that mention plutonium (as the
crank, the element, or even the hostname) in any header.  I don't know
of any hosts named plutonium, but given that several recent "sci.math"
articles mention "magnesium.club.cc.cmu.edu" in the "Path:" header,
the chance of deleting some innocuous or even valuable posting is
very high with your method.  Even narrowing to the "From:" header is
dangerous--I don't know if anyone posts from a host named plutonium,
but there's no particular reason to suppose it's trash for that
reason.  I advise using

/^from:.*plutonium@/hj

instead.  This will only delete postings by a user whose name ends in
the string "plutonium".  I believe this pretty much narrows it down to
Ludi, though anyone else who wants to crawl under his rock with him
may do so.

Anyone else who needs help writing kill files should take it to
news.software.readers instead of a half-dozen `science' groups.

Dan Hoey
Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil