Tuesday, January 11, 2000, 12:37:59 AM, Thomas wrote:
> And here is the stupid question: what is "scoring"?
Scoring is a filtering system (hush and listen, I know TB! has filtering)
whereby the filters assign a score to a newsgroup article based on the rules
provided in the score. You can score an article positively or negatively.
The final score of all filters that apply to the article is what the article
is scored to. Then the newsreader sorts by score. The end result is that
articles that you want to read float to the top, articles you don't drop to
the bottom. Articles scored below a certain threshold are killed outright.
Personally I take something of a "binary" approach to my scoring. A
message containing a Reference header that has my unique ID (IE, a reply in a
thread I participated in) scores 1000. A message from someone I like to read
from or on a topic I like gets score 100. 10 isn't used. Any article not
containing Re: in it (or variants thereof) are scored 1. In this way,
articles that are in threads I am active in are at the top, followed by
interesting articles, followed by all new threads in the newsgroup, then all
old threads, than any negative scores I might have. So a score of 1201 would
be an article in a thread I'm active in, on a topic I am interested in, by an
author I want to read messages from who has changed the subject to denote a
shift in the conversation.
Now, as you may note other news clients let you "watch a thread" or
highlight replies to you and so on. But it is the combination of all of those
that makes scoring unique. The others will only use one filter at a time to
highlight messages. Furthermore, filters can have negative scoring have an
effect on the important of a message. For example, in some forums I give
certain people a little leeway and will score them negatively before
killfiling them. I do have scores ranging from -100 to -500. The same goes
for subjects on certain newsgroups. So take the above example and change the
author to someone I really don't like (-500) who replied to whomever changed
the topic. Score is 600.
+1000 - in a thread I participate in.
+ 100 - On a subject I am watching
- 500 - by an author I'm not pleased with
Clearly it is a thread I want to see, but since its score is lower than
other participants in the thread ("normal" people would score 1100) I know it
is prolly just a schmuck and can skip it if I choose.
An email client that applies email filters only cannot compare to that
simple, yet powerful way of sifting through the thousands of posts newsgroups
get per day. That is why I said email and news are handled in two completely
separate ways.
--
Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
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