On Thu, 04 Oct 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.debian, in article
<FO6dnU2DxIfBupjanZ2dnUVZ_q-jnZ2d@bresnan.com>, sk8r-365 wrote:

>Horton heard a Who named Moe Trin saying:

>> That's a bit on the low side. For _most_ of the 84 groups I try to
>> scan daily, I allow up to 4 groups.

>84!? Holy smokes. I have time for 3 groups. I'm so busy I have to
>be draconian about x-posting limits. BTW, on the matter of killing
>posts and expense; way I had it getting articles was very
>slowwwwwww.

There's a difference between _reading_ a newsgroup and scanning it.
That's the reason all of the netiquette guidelines and FAQs suggest
using a descriptive subject line. For more than half of the posts to
Usenet, the Subject: line - in fact, only the first 40 characters -
is probably all I'm going to see. The 'n' and 'c' keys get a lot of
use when looking at Usenet.

Actually, 84 groups isn't that bad, as _usually_ only about 45 have
any posts at all, and many of the groups don't even get double-digit
numbers of posts daily (heck, some don't even do that in a month). A
more accurate measure is the total article counts, and that has been
running around 5-600 per day before the news _reader_ (as opposed to
slrnpull) starts killing things.

>> you said two groups are OK? Try
>>
>> Xref: :.*:.*:
>>
>> which should kill posts where the Xref: header contains three colons.
>
>Now that's working and is F-A-S-T!

Glad to help.

>Here's my faster score file (thanks to you), but I have to set each item
>separately; for an unknown reason grouping isn't getting it:

>[*]
>Score: =-9999
> Xref: advocacy
>[*]
>Score: =-9999
> Xref: windows

[snip]
[*]
Score:: =-9999
Xref: advocacy
Xref: windows
Xref: conspiracy
Xref: flame
Xref: kook
Xref: microsoft
Xref: politics
Xref: :.*:.*:

Two colons on the score line, not one.

>% kills all "test" posts not in a *test NG

I kill them all, along with

Score: =-9999
Subject: don
Subject: read

Here, the single colon says this score only applies to posts where the
subject line includes BOTH the string 'don' and 'read'.

>% limits message size in max bytes;
>% if it can't be said in about 400 lines
>% there's to much yapping, it's a binary
>% or unneeded text is not being snipped
>Score: =-9999
> Bytes: 14700

Score:: =-9999
Bytes: 14700
Lines: 400

Again, two colons on the score line to logically _OR_ the conditions.

Actually, I put an exception for several groups where I know there will
occasionally be some longer posts - such as the monthly posting to
news.announce.newgroups (and news.groups and news.lists.misc) of the
list of sanctioned Big Eight newsgroups (~2310 lines).

>Thanks for your time!!

Glad to be able to help!

Old guy