From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 17:25:13 +0800
To: Chip Mefford <cmefford@avwashington.com>
Subject: Re: cypherpunk listserve usefulness
In-Reply-To: <v03007801ae65b79e711a@[207.79.65.35]>
Message-ID: <3240C832.E1E@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Chip Mefford wrote:
> As much as it shames me, I have recently discovered that by filtering
> messages from only 2 participants and setting body filters on 3
> keywords have remarkably improved the usefulness of this listserve.
> As much as I do enjoy some of the filtered subject matter, I really
> feel it is very off subject and makes this listserver useless for the 
> intended task.
> I guess that makes me a censor and it has me reexamining some things.

Why not have the filter be more like a sieve, and dump the low-priority 
stuff into separate containers, then sort them by personal criteria such 
as message size, frequency of key words, etc.?  If you maintain multiple 
sorts, you can look over the stuff when you have a chance, and mass-dump 
a series of messages that don't make a cutoff you specify at read-time.

Since I write my own utilities, I can mix and match keyword parsers, 
multiple-indexed text browsing, and so on. Of course, the commercially-
available software totally sucks...