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When you create a kill file (under Unix) for a topic in a
newsgroup, the file is stored under your "~/News" directory
(buried several layers deep). For example: you read the group
"", and some idiots from some alternate group have been
posting inflamatory material into your group just to create
trouble and start a flame war (true current situation in
another group). If you come across a post along those lines,
you can automatically create the kill file by pressing ""
(capital "") - it will mark that item (and any following it
w/the same subject) as read and put the apropriate entry into
the kill file. The file itself is located in a directory
structure resembling the newsgroup, so for:
rec.boats
the kill file would reside in:
~/News/rec/boats/KILL
In this file (assuming you've killed things previously)
you'll see things like:
/:*alt.tasteless*/h:j
/^From:.*nutcase@wherever.com*/h:j
/: *Stupid topic/:j
The first line is an example of killing by searching for any
article cross-posted to the group "" (a tip-off that it's
probable flame bait), the second line is customized to ignore
any post from the user "@wherever.com" (or whatever address
they use), and the third line is an example of ignoring any
post relating to the topic " topic" These are three ways you
can filter out posts you don't want to see. The "" at the end
of each line stands for " the article."
Once you understand how things work, you can hand-edit your
KILL file for whatever group you wish, to either add new
entries or to remove old entries that no longer apply, or to
rejoin threads you'd previously killed. Use caution when
editing your KILL file; if you get the syntax wrong the
results next time you read news will be unpredictable. You
might want to make a copy of the KILL file before manually
editing. Lastly, never edit your KILL file while you have any
newsreader launched. It will most likely overwrite any
changes you make when the newsreader exits.
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