Re: how can I keep gnus from Hiding All Threads when open a group

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:

[...]

>> No matter what, I think the main recommendation would be to try to open
>> group buffers with fewer messages! Is it really necessary to display
>> tens of thousands of messages each time?

[...]

> (The effort to acquire postings is preparatory to try to learn how to
> use the new search possibilities that yourself, Andrew C and others
> have been working on currently as noted in several continuing threads
> on `gmane.emacs.gnus.general')
>
> The problem is that if I asked gnus to just download whatever is on
> the gmane or enews.newsguy.com spools for a group..., in the most
> interesting ones there may be several hundred thousand msgs going back
> to early 2000, in some cases I've gotten clear into the late 90s.
>
> So I set about acquiring around 50,000 or so where possible. Ended up
> with 8 grps or so, but most are between 10 and 40 thousand with a few
> above 70,000.  
>
> Hence the spate of time spent opening many many headers to be able to
> mark and download 50,000 or so in bunches of 5,000 or so, and over
> time, so as not to get blackballed off gmane for abusive downloading.
>
> Maybe some kind of trickery with agent categories could have made this
> a bit or even a lot easier... I just set the predicate to `true' on
> all agentized groups and did the downloading manually
>
> I have 38 groups agentized over three servers .. quite minor league
> compared to a real news spool...
>
> I ended up with 1,033,195 posts but now only have to keep up with what
> is newly posted.

Yeesh... At this point it might make more sense just to install your own
local LeafNode server and do nntp yourself, don't you think?

I'm sorry I can't speak to your specific questions about the agent -- I
only use the agent with my gmane backend (all the other backends are
local), and there I just agentize the whole server, I haven't tried
anything finer-grained than that.