From Newsgroup: comp.misc


probably the majority of usenet newsgroup subscribers have set their newsreader(s) to automatically demote cross-posted articles globally,
and also probably have set to "move", "ignore", or "delete" articles
with overview (xover) headers containing strings of known troll farm
aliases, servers, etc., either globally, or in some cases limited to
specific newsgroups and/or hierarchies . . . but because 99.9999% of
usenet is troll farm, simply setting the newsreader to automatically
delete all troll farm articles globally, activity in most newsgroups
ceases to exist, and will appear inactive; i prefer to use "move" or
"ignore" in scoring filters, that way it's obvious that nntp servers
are still functional, and after three long decades (since c. ~ 1994),
troll farm remains the defacto owner of usenet, with rare exceptions

i like to use the automatic "move" (to user-specified target folder)
by scoring on both xover and non-xover headers in certain newsgroups,
by auto-downloading all articles that get posted there daily, mostly
troll farm botnet piffle, but depending on the newsgroup(s), on rare
occasion something legitimate gets posted by the non-troll/non-robot contributors which article header(s) may in turn be whitelisted, and
no longer automatically moved to the junk folder, set to auto-delete
after a few days . . . as always, the golden rule is avoid not evade

the "ignore" flag is also handy for auto-scoring all articles posted
from unknown aliases (typical of troll farm sock puppets continually
morphing header stings, particularly the "from" field), servers, etc.
that are not already blacklisted ("moved" to junk folder) and/or not
otherwise whitelisted (most usenet participants/lurkers are insiders,
but so are most server administrators, it is their planet after all),
so the "ignore" flag will automatically ignore replies to subthreads
without ignoring similarly unflagged articles & unflagged subthreads,
which in turn makes it particularly resistant to troll farm meddling

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