************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** Welcome to My Killfile - Part I This may be the most important article you will ever read in your entire life. Then again, reading about how to find a wedding dress shop that doesn't go bankrupt two days before your big day is probably more important. But I can't speak about that so I going to speak about killfiles. Despite such a nasty name, killfiles are handy little things that make life on the Internet's news system, USENET, a whole lot more bearable. When you read a group on USENET, you see all the messages people all around the world have posted to that group since the last time you read it. Lately, it seems, people have been posting lots of off-topic flames (mostly about Windows 95). A couple are no problem, but it's no fun seeing hundreds scroll past your monitor, crowding out information that is actually on topic. Trying to follow even a handful of groups in this environment can be overwhelming unless you use a killfile. Killfiles neatly dispose of unwanted material before you can even see it. Whew. The down side is a killfile is only useful when using your provider's UNIX-based newsreader trn or tin (the Toronto Freenet's reader of choice). Most SLIP/PPP newsreaders, sadly, don't yet support this feature. Luckily if you use the uqwk offline mail packer, uqwk won't pack messages killed under trn (tip: run trn before running uqwk). In trn, the easiest way to start your killfiling days is to go to each group you've subscribed to, find a thread you're tired of seeing, begin reading a message in that thread and then press Shift+k. For example, find a "make money fast" message and then kill it. Anytime you read that group, you will no longer see any message with "make money fast" in the title. Of course, if someone were to create a message called "make money really fast", your killfile would not catch it because it doesn't exactly match the pattern "make money fast". Now this is where the fun begins. You don't have to kill specific threads. You can edit your killfile from trn and tune it to kill future offensive patterns. To edit your file, press Control+k at the end of any message. You will be taken to a text editor that lets you manipulate the killfile's contents. In the killfile, each thread to be killed occupies a single line. The syntax is /pattern/command:command. If you never want to see any message with "make money" in the subject line, you could put "/make money/:j" in the killfile. What's between the two /'s is killed. The ":j" is a code that means "kill this if I find it in the subject line". "J" means junk and by default, having nothing before the colon means that the killfile should only junk patterns in the Subject: line. If you want to kill all message from a particularly annoying user, you could put a line in your file like this: /david@torfree.net/f:j. "f" means junk any message with the pattern "david@torfree.net" in the From: line. Be warned, that a finely honed killfile can result in you giving up on USENET all together. This happened to home town wit Val Dodge (val@io.org). One day he jumped to tor.general, saw 165 new message and then saw his killfile report 165 new messages killed. He fled in terror or boredom. Regardless, he's been missed. Tune in to the next column for "Art of the Kill," featuring advice from local killfile experts.