Marking Cross-posted Messages Read in All Newsgroups

[Ken Blake]

Using Thunderbird 68.2.1. A cross-posted message is showing up in each
folder I open that it's been cross-posted to. Is it possible to have it
marked as read when I visit another newsgroup to which the article was
cross-posted? If so, what should I change to make that happen.

[Rink]

Op 3-11-2019 om 17:46 schreef Ken Blake:

Outlook Expres had this feature.
I still miss it....

[dillinger]

You can add some filters, since cross-post typically is between a few
comparable groups it would be something like this:

Say there are three groups: group1, group2, group3.

In group2 add a filter:
Newsgroups contains group1: mark read.

In group3 add 2 filters (match any of the following):
Newsgroups contains group1: mark read.
Newsgroups contains group2: mark read.

You have to add Newsgroups yourself to the list (Customize...).

It is a workaround, of course, but it works for me.

[Bob Henson]

On the principle that all cross-posted messages are junk (very rarely not
the case) one filter will get rid of all of them. I have a filter that says

If Newsgroups contains "," (just a comma - without speech marks) then
delete.

That does the lot in one run. Instead of "delete" it should say "ignore
subthread" but that still remains broken in Thunderbird and has done for 7
years now - see

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=799040

if anyone is interested. Certainly the Thunderbird devs aren't.

--
Bob
Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England

Year - a period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/4/19 1:21 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
> On the principle that all cross-posted messages are junk (very rarely
> not the case) one filter will get rid of all of them. I have a filter
> that says

I agree that cross posting is abused. But I also frequently find myself
cross-posting to a small number of groups, /and/ setting the follow-up
to the single group that I think is most on topic. I do this because
I've found that some of the newsgroups that I participate in are seldom
read by different sets of people. So I send a "Hi, do you know anything
about..." type message to directly adjacent to newsgroups to see if a
wider audience can help. I recently did this with some IBM PS/2 and
OS/2 related things. I frequently get quality responses from other
newsgroups, usually to where I set follow-up to.

As a news server administrator, I have spam filters configured to
penalize messages for cross-posting to too many newsgroups and / or lack
of a follow-up to newsgroup. I, and other news administrators, think a
few newsgroups is okay.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

[Dave Royal]

This shortcoming has been around for a while:
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43278>
--
(Remove numerics from email address)

[Bob Henson]

I can see your point, and the possible good uses for cross-posting. Put
another way - not all cross-posted messages are junk, but many/nearly all
junk messages are cross-posted. I think, as you mention, it's the lack of
follow-ups being set that annoys me most - and even the non-junk messages
usually fall into that category.

Because of the other bug in Thunderbird I mentioned, I reluctantly use
Dialog for newsgroups and that has the ability to read only one cross-post
and then ignore the other groups - but that so rarely helps me that I still
delete all cross-posts.

--
Bob
Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England

Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

[Bob Henson]

By the way, I didn't mention that Dialog can do what you want if you need a
newsreader that can read just the first instance of a cross post - but you
may not want to have a separate newsreader since Thunderbird is by far and
away the best email client. I use both because of the Thunderbird bug I
mentioned - but I still delete cross-posts.

--
Bob
Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/4/19 11:47 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
> I can see your point, and the possible good uses for cross-posting. Put
> another way - not all cross-posted messages are junk, but many/nearly
> all junk messages are cross-posted. I think, as you mention, it's
> the lack of follow-ups being set that annoys me most - and even the
> non-junk messages usually fall into that category.

I can see value in a rule that looks for a comma in the Newsgroup header
and for Followup-To being blank. IMHO that will have fewer false
positives than just looking for a comma in the Newsgroup header.

> Because of the other bug in Thunderbird I mentioned, I reluctantly
> use Dialog for newsgroups and that has the ability to read only one
> cross-post and then ignore the other groups - but that so rarely
> helps me that I still delete all cross-posts.

Ya. I wish ignore (sub)thread actually worked.

IMHO, Thunderbird is squarely in the "lesser of the evils" camp. It
hasn't been "good" in a while. 68 breaking a number of extensions that
I rely on has caused it to slip closer to the bad side. :-/