pan-users
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[Pan-users] Re: How to filter spam from Gmane?


From: Duncan
Subject: [Pan-users] Re: How to filter spam from Gmane?
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 06:33:09 -0700
User-agent: Pan/0.14.2.91 (As She Crawled Across the Table)

Lynda Metref posted <address@hidden>,
excerpted below,  on Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:33:24 +0800:

> I use pan to read mailing lists through Gmane. Gmane Has a spam filter
> that cross-post the spam to gmane.spam.detected. Thus I like to have a
> filter reading the Xref header and don't show nor download the message
> containing "gmane.spam.detected" in it. How can I do this
> with Pan? Does someone know a better solution?

As you, I'm a  gmane user on PAN.  Unfortunately, I've not figured out how
to make such scoring/filtering work.  (Fortunately, there's little enough
spam in the gmane groups/lists I visit that it's not that big a deal. It'a
s bigger deal in some of my non-gmane groups.)

PAN's scoring/filtering is /extremely/ limited, relatively speaking. 

First, it only works on the headers normally available in an overview, so
even if one were willing to download and score/filter only what one saw,
rather than what one downloaded, as would be necessary to work with the
body or non-overview headers, it's simply impossible, as PAN is currently
coded.  I've previously made the case that even if the message has to be
downloaded in ordered to apply the action, it's still far and away better
than forcing the user to actually view the downloaded message and apply
the score/filtering manually, which is where we're at presently.  I asked
Charles about it, however, and he said while he recognized that as the
case, adding the ability to score/filter on data only available after
download wasn't a priority for him, and was targeted at "bluesky", which
means it'd be nice to have, but no plans to add it currently or in the
predicted future.  Of course, that's subject to change if a coder is
sufficiently interested in a feature to code it up and provide patches,
but unfortunately, I'm not a coder, so here we sit.

Actually, that was some time ago, as well.  It was before PAN even added
scoring -- only filtering was available -- but when scoring was added, it
worked on the same overview-only data as filters had.  While scoring is
cool and all, personally, I'd have FAR rather had full-post filtering
available, than scoring, but I'm not the one coding, so I'm not the one
setting the priorities.  Of course, that was before what effectively
became a two-year break in coding virtually /anything/ with PAN.  Again,
I'm not the one coding, and PAN is something Charles does as a hobby in
his free time, so if he's simply had other stuff to do for a few years, I
certainly won't contemn him for it.  After all, he's done his part --
the code is out there for anyone wanting to run with it.  (FWIW, I believe
the money in the paypal tipjar has been less than $100, total, tho that
might be a bit off if there have been many or large donations, recently,
certainly nothing a coder could live on in any case.)  Anyway, the memory
issues on large groups and backend changes ultimately leading to the
planned switch to SQLite, which will open up a whole new array in
possibilities in terms of automated multi-server use and tracking, which
is the development area being worked on now, is /just/ as useful.

I just would have implemented /some/ form of whole-post filterability, had
I been doing it, before I bothered with scoring, but that's just me, and
I'm not able to submit the code to do it, so...

Second, even on stuff available in the overview, as the xref header should
be, the possible filtering isn't all that great.  While there's an ability
to apply a created filter to specific newsgroups, which could be acting on
this header, it doesn't seem to.  Rather, it appears to only apply to the
group PAN is displaying at the moment.  I've not been able to get PAN to
successfully score/filter on the xref header contents, even when I
manually add a properly formatted entry to the score file.

...

One thing that /might/ work, which I have /not/ tried, so I don't know,
would be to subscribe to gmane.spam.detected, and make a point of always
loading it first.  If you set the scoring and filters to ignore everything
in that group, marking read or deleting (it's possible it'll work with
mark-read but not with delete, due to cross-group dynamics), then load
your regular group, PAN may continue to honor the scores in other groups. 
Obviously, this would only work on gmane (tho a similar strategy could be
used on servers that carry a control.cancel group and don't actually honor
cancels), and involves a manual step, so it's only worth the trouble if
the problem gets big enough.  As I said, the problem hasn't been a big one
on my gmane groups, so I haven't bothered trying this, yet.  If you do,
please reply with the results, so I know.

(The above assumes you have an appropriate mark-read and/or delete filter
that can be applied to the score.  I've posted step-by-step guides to that
in the past.  If you missed them and have trouble figuring it out
yourself, post a reply saying you need help with it, and I'll comply, but
no need to repeat it here if you already know how or find the process of
setting up such a thing intuitive.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html






reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]