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Trolls, Killfiling, Filtering and NewsReader Configuration Page

Introduction

misc.writing.screenplays.moderated is a newsgroup for screenwriters that has periodically experienced extended bouts of excessive off-topic posting from internet users intent on hoisting the newsgroup for their own purposes. This document was compiled by members of the MWSM community to help new users, and users switching to different news readers, in configuring their software so they can enjoy usenet in general, and MWSM in particular, as it was intended.

If you have comments or suggestions for this document, please forward them to Alan Brooks (e-mail address: chips at panix.com).

Contents

• News Reader Configuration
• Standalone newsreaders
• Outlook Express
• Xnews
• MT NewsWatcher
• Trolls and Anti-Troll Techniques
• Killfile Configuration
• Outlook Express
• Xnews
• Agent
• MT NewsWatcher
• AOL and Compuserve
• Gravity
• RN and TRN (for you Unix geeks)

Most ISPs allow their subscribers to access their news server using a nonproprietary, stand-alone newsreader such as Outlook Express, Xnews, or Agent. Unfortunately, this is not the case with AOL, so AOL users who wish to use a better newsreader than the one AOL provides will first have to subscribe to a news server before using any of the recommended news readers.

Signing up for a free News Service

A particularly fine news server is a free German news server, News.Individual.Net. To access the new server, you must first register with them on their web site at http://www.news.individual.net. They will email you a user name and a password, generally within 24 hours.

Outlook Express is a component of Internet Explorer. If you have IE on your computer, you already have OE. The file which launches OE is msimn.exe, and it is usually found in C:\Program Files\Outlook Express.

The instructions provided here are for OE for Windows. Although they're not written for the Mac, Mac users will probably find them useful anyway for setting up a news account.

To add a news account in Outlook Express:

1. Go to Tools/Accounts/Add/News.
2. Display name: type whatever you want your screen name to be [next]
3. Email address: type whatever email address you want to show up [next]
4. News (NNTP) server: Type in whatever your news server is called, such as news.earthlink.net, news.compuserve.com, etc. If you are using the German server, then enter news.individual.net
5. Check off: "My news server requires me to log on." [next]
6. Account name: Your user name for your ISP. If you are using the German server, the user name they sent you.
7. Password: whatever password you need to log in to your ISP. If you are using the German server, whatever password they sent you.
8. Check off: "Remember password." [next] [finish] [close]
9. Would you like to download newsgroups? [Yes]
10. OE will now download about 40,000 newsgroups. Find MWS and click Subscribe, then click Okay. Don't choose GoTo or else the program will start downloading about 35,000 messages! Repeat for any other group you wish to subscribe to.
11. Click on the name of your news server on the left half of the screen. On the right half of the screen, under Settings, set the newsgroup to download New Messages Only. It's best if you apply Catchup. You can right-click on the newsgroup to choose Catchup, which marks all posts as read, including any on the server that you haven't downloaded yet. You can also select Catchup from the Edit menu. If you don't catch up and start fresh from this day forward, OE will still download all the messages on the news.individual.net server the first time you synchronize the account.

To retrieve new messages later than today (if you catch up, there will temporarily be no new messages to retrieve), click on Synchronize. To quickly update your posts after you've finished reading them, Refresh your screen (F5 or View/Refresh.)

Important: Make sure that your threads are by default expanded so that you can see the individual posts listed. To expand threads, go to Tools/Options/Read and check "Automatically expand grouped threads." The reason this is important is that if your threads aren't expanded, when you go to read them, if you click "Next," you'll be taken to the next thread topic rather than the next post in the thread.

Another helpful hint: For ease of reading, set your view to "Hide Read or Ignored Messages." You'll find it under View/Current View. That way, whenever you refresh your posts, you'll only be seeing new and/or unread posts.

A really, really good newsgroup if you need help with OE is microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6.outlookexpress. Someone from Microsoft hangs out there to answer questions.

Final helpful hint: You need to be connected to the Internet for OE to work.

You can download Xnews, a free newsreader, at http://Xnews.newsguy.com/.

From the drop-down Server menu, choose New. Type in whatever your news server is called, such as news.earthlink.net, news.compuserve.com, etc. If you are using the German server, then enter news.individual.net. Click Okay. Enter either a cutsey name for your news server or the same name, then click Okay.

In the SetUp screen, under User Name, type in your user name for your ISP. If you are using the German server, enter the user name they sent you. Under password, type in whatever password you need to log in to your ISP. If you are using the German server, enter whatever password they sent you. Click Okay.

You will be asked, "Retrieve entire list of newsgroups from server?" Click Yes. Xnews will now retrieve about 40,000 thousand newsgroups.

Find misc.writing.screenplays, right-click on it, and choose Subscribe. Repeat for any other group you wish to subscribe to.

Click on the word All in the lower left corner. Now you will see only those groups you are subscribed to.

Right click again on MWS and choose CatchUp. This marks all the articles Read. Later on, you can double-click on a newsgroup and it will retrieve only articles added after that point in time. If you don't catch up, Xnews will download every post still on the server.

A really, really good newsgroup if you need help with Xnews is news.software.readers. Someone there will always know the answer to your question. Ignore anyone who gets snarky. Be sure to put [Xnews] in the subject line.

Final helpful hint: You need to be connected to the Internet for Xnews to work.

Some websites to help you get started with MT Newswatcher:

This tells you all you need to know about MT Newswatcher -- and is a download site (free download)

This tells you all you need to know (with screenshots) about Filtering with Newswatcher.

Although you can access newsgroups on a Mac with Outlook Express and Entourage, MT Newswatcher is much more versatile and much easier to create filters on -- and not just killfiles. You can flag messages from favorite posters or follow specific threads too. You can do all this in any selected newsgroup or set of groups or in all of Usenet.

Each newsgroup has a charter, and there are mechanisms in place to ensure that the topics that are supposed to be discussed are listed in the newsgroup charter and the names of newsgroups reflect appropriate topics for discussion.

There are, however, few ways to enforce a group's charter, so off-topic posts will oftentimes overwhelm a newsgroup. A person who intentially makes off-topic posts is called a "troll". This wonderful word connotes both an ugly, brute creature waiting under a bridge to harrass passers-by, and a person dangling bait behind a running boat to see if any fish are stupid enough to snap at it. You can assume either etymology, and you can use troll, in newsgroup context, as either a verb, a noun or an epithet. Trolls practice their craft for reasons of personal fulfillment, guile or, sometimes, self-promotion. But none of those reasons matter. The troll has his or her life to live and you have yours. This section is about how you can live your internet life the way you want to, leaving the trolls to flail helplessly at empty air.

There are a variety of ways to handle trolls, but the universally accepted, best method available is: IGNORE THEM. Trolls feed on your anger and your inability to stop them.

From the troll's point of view, trolling can be an empowering way to spend a few idle hours, knowing that you've sent a few casual messages into the internet-space, and that while you're out strolling around a sun-dappled park sipping a mocha frappachino, dozens of sweaty and highly angered geeks are pounding out replies to questions you don't even really care about. Later you can return to your keyboard, subtly ignoring the bulk of their replies, addressing only side-issues or intentionally taking their words out of context, and you'll get them all cranked again. Anyone who has ever harrassed a small, helpless pre-adolescent sibling about their zits or lack of breasts knows the simple and yet deeply satisfying pleasures of trolling. If we could harness the energy of troll-responders' righteous and misplaced indignation, our dependence on fossil fuels would disappear overnight.

So it's worth repeating: Trolls feed on your response. Don't Feed The Trolls.

Of course, not feeding the trolls is much easier if you can't see them, and that's where filtering comes into play.

A newsgroup filter or "killfile" is a way of personalizing your news reading exsperience by eliminating posters who bother you or whom you find irrelevant. A killfile does not change what's really happening on the newsgroup, but it can make your reading and discussion experience much more enjoyable. When your news reading software downloads messages, a local copy is kept for you to browse. If you've turned on a filter, that message list is first cleansed of any posts you don't want to see before it's presented to you.

While OE is the most popular newsreader (or perhaps AOL's reader might be?) more powerful filters are available in Xnews and other news readers. If the trolls have really gotten to you, and you want to make them completely disappear, you should switch from OE to another newsreader with better filters, like Xnews (this is true, as of this writing, September 2004, using the Outlook Express that comes with Windows Explorer 6.x.)

OE allows filtering mostly on key words and posters' user ids. Xnews allows all that OE does, plus an ability to eliminate cross-posts, which are posts that go to more than one newsgroup at a time. Cross-posting has its place in legitimate newsgroup use, but it's an especially popular feature with trolls because of the mass-irritation factor that results from them being able to post off-topic in many places at once.

At the time of this writing (Fall, 2004) misc.writing.screenplays has suffered a singular attack from a serial troll for almost two years. This particular troll's technique is to crib copyrighted articles and cross-post them to a half-dozen groups to which the information has no relevence. At times, this troll's postings, and replies to them, constitute over 80% of the MWS traffic. Without a killfile, the newsgroup is very difficult to use for on-topic discussions.

Many people have addressed the troll problem, and there are many other web pages that offer advice on how to behave and how to configure software against trolls. One excellent page is at Hyphenologist. There is also a program called NFilter that allows Outlook Express to do a better job of killfiling.

Most important is how you react to crackpot messages and to trolls in general. Prof. Timo Salmi, in Finland has some advice to offer on dealing with crackpots, and Martin X. Moleski, SJ has a page of wisdom on newsgroup creation and good newsgroup citizenery.

Killfiling fixes your view of the problem, but it doesn't address the situation for newcomers to groups, who still have to wade through a dense underbrush of trollery. If you want to help with this situation, remember to always trim your newsgroup headers so you're only replying to the group(s) you wish to reply to, not the troll's selection of groups. You can also create an anti-troll page, like this one, which can be posted regularly to your favorite group (as this one is to misc.writing.screenplays) to inform others of what they can do.

You can also send a polite note to users who respond to trolls, asking them to control themselves, and if they can't control themselves to please trim out the irrelevant newsgroups from their posting headers before they reply. Send them a reference to this page. You can reach this section of this page via the link:

http://schmuckwithanunderwood.com/trolls.html#trolls

If you have other links on this topic, or other information you feel would improve this page, feel free to mail them to Alan Brooks, removing the two 'y''s from the address to make it work properly.

To killfile a user in OE, open an offending post, right click on the offender's name in the From: line, then choose "Block Sender".

Xnews is a highly sophisticated newsreader and can kill posts in a variety of ways. Not all methods are discussed here.

The easiest way to killfile Jai/Jay specifically is to highlight a post by him. Hit K. Choose 0 for never expire. Repeat for any other posters you want to killfile.

You can also killfile posts that have been cross-posted to a specified number of newsgroup. From the drop-down Special menu, choose Setup Xnews. Click on the Misc. tab. Under "Kill articles cross-posted to more than," select any number you desire. If you set this parameter to 3 or 4, virtually all of Jai's posts and the responses thereto will be killfiled. This will also eliminate a good deal of the political spam. Unfortunately, it will also eliminate on-topic posts cross-posted to film-related newsgroups.

Alternatively, and a much more controlled method, is to killfile posts by "scoring" them. Xnews keeps a record of all such scoring in its score.ini file. Copy the text between the lines of asterisks below and paste it into your c:\Xnews\score.ini file. This will killfile all posts by Jai/Jay and virtually all the responses thereto by killing all posts sent to the newsgroups to which he routinely posts. Genuine, on-topic MWS posts cross-posted to film-related groups remain unaffected. Most importantly, these posts will be killed only in MWS. If you subscribe to any of those newsgroups, you will be able to read all the posts unhindered.

(contributed by Paul Harwood)

Agent is an integrated mail and newsreader client available from Forte, Inc. at www.forteinc.com.

Given Agent's popularity, there are numerous FAQs available to help new users. A good place to start is the newsgroup

where you can look for a post with the title "Pointer: Agent FAQs and Information." As of September 2004, this FAQ is posted weekly and is well-maintained.

There's also a helpful FAQ posted on the Forte Web site:

Using this information, you should have no trouble getting Agent up and running.

Once you have Agent operational and you've subscribed to misc.writing.screenplays, you can eliminate the cross-posted noise from trolls and irritating and irrelevant posters by the following:

1. 1) First, subscribe to the newsgroup alt.fan.jai-maharaj. Yes, I know this is distasteful, but it really will eliminate the cross-posts from MWS. With alt.fan.jai-maharaj highlighted in the "Groups" window, open Group --> Properties and set the following options:
1. a) On the "Retrieve" tab, check "Override default settings" and make sure that "Retrieve bodies for all new headers" is NOT checked.
2. b) On the "What to Purge" tab, check "Override default settings" and set expiration times for all options to 1 day.
3. c) On the "Mark read" tab, check "Override default settings" and check the "Mark all existing messages read" radio button in both sections.
4. d) Click OK.
2. 2) With misc.writing.screenplays highlighted in the "Groups" window, open Group --> Properties and select the "Crossposts" tab.
3. 3) Check the box "Enable cross-post checking," and, just below it, check the box "Override default settings."
4. 4) Check the radio button appropriate for the way in which you'd like cross-posts to be managed in MWS:
1. a) If you don't want to see them at all, check "Skip the header (Don't retrieve it)."
2. b) If you simply want to skip over the cross-posted material, check "Mark the header read."
3. c) If you want to read all of the cross-posted stuff (and if you do, why are you reading this?) then check "Retrieve normally."
5. 5) "Look for cross-posted messages only when retrieving NEW headers" should not be checked, and the "Message ID" option for "Detect cross-posted messages by:" is just fine.
6. 6) Click OK.

You're ready to go! Every time you click the "Get new headers in subscribed groups" icon, Agent will first look at the headers in Jai/Jay's vanity group, make note of them, and then adios them in all other groups to which you are subscribed -- including MWS.

(Section contributed by Dave Urwin)

To filter out a particular users, open one of the posts you'd like to kill, then:

1. Go to Filters menu --> Create Filter for... A drop-down menu gives you four choices. Choose misc.writing.screenplays.
2. A tabbed dialog box will open. The three tabs, from left to right, are Matching & Action, Advanced Options, Article Effects. The first (Matching & Action) is displayed by default.
3. There are three pop-up menus in a row, with a text-entry box beneath:
1. options Kill, Keep, Hilite --> choose Kill
2. options Subject, From, Keywords, etc. --> choose Xref
3. options Contains, Doesn't Contain, Starts With, etc. --> choose Contains
4. As you choose an option from pop-up 2, the text entry box will automatically fill with relevant info from the post you have open, so you should see a list of the cross-posted newsgroups.
5. You can edit the contents of this box if you want. For example, I've deleted all the newsgroups except for "alt.fan.jai-maharaj," and this seems to do the required filtering perfectly well.
6. Done. The other two tabbed sections don't need any adjustments, so:
7. Click OK.
8. Close the post you had open and the MWS window. Open the MWS window again, and marvel at all the posts that aren't there now. Now check the bottom-left corner of the window: NewsWatcher will tell you how many messages your filter has killed.

In the AOL newsreader, go to Set Preferences. Click on the Filtering tab. Under Select Filter Type, choose "Author is." Under Enter New Filter, type usenet@mantra.com or the address of any other person you want to killfile. Click Add Filter, then Save.

(Contributed by Jeri Jo Thomas)

You can get rid of annoying posters by using Gravity's Bozo Bin, the Ignore Thread function, with rules, and with scoring. I'm not well versed on the scoring portion, and just barely able to write rules, but with the first two:

Putting offenders in the Bozo Bin: Right-click on the name in the thread pane, the list of all the threads and their senders. When the menu pops up, click on "Bozo Bin". On the menu bar in Tools/Bozo Bin all of your detainees should be listed. At the bottom of the window check off "Remove bozo items not used within X days", X being whatever length of time that you desire. 180 days works pretty well.

Ignoring offending threads: Again, in the thread pane, right-click on the original subject title, which will be in bold letters, instead of the replies, whether read or unread. In the pop-up menu select "Ignore Thread". On the menu bar in View/Ignore List... your ignored threads will be listed with "days since seen". On this window click "Settings". and make the number of days to ignore the thread as many days as you like. 365 days has a ring to it. If the thread comes up every day the "days since seen" will be zero, so those will always be at the top.

(Contributed by Blair P. Houghton)

If you use a rn- or trn-based newsreader, you can use these lines in your killfile to kill both the offending party and all articles depending from his in the thread:

The above sample is, of course, configured to eliminate the well-known usenet kook Jay Stevens, aka, Jai Maharaj.

If instructions for the newsreader you wish to use have not been included in this FAQ, please let us know, and we'll try our best to add them. For now, see what you can glean from the "Killfile FAQ for Newsgroups", at www.hyphenologist.co.uk/killfile/killfilefaqhtm.htm

This document was compiled by MWS users Dena Jo, Matthew Cope, Dave Urwin, Jeri Jo Thomas, Paul Harwood, Blair P. Houghton and Alan Brooks. (copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved).