Limits of "kill files"; an alternative (was Re: [EM] temporarily

[Steve Eppley]

   cc: Mike

Mike O wrote:
-snip-
>This kill-file will have to filter out not only their letters, but
>also any replies to them. That's asking a lot, especially for
>someone who doesn't know a damn thing about UNIX. Since I only have
>a bbs account, it may not even be possible. 
-snip-

That's asking too much of a kill file.  A unix kill file causes unix
to dump incoming email from a list of addresses.  So it won't dump
replies to killed authors' messages which are posted by unkilled 
senders.

But in practice I don't think the extra firewall would add much.
Those unkilled replies would typically contain the kinds of rebuttals
that Mike would have been tempted to write himself, had no one else
posted them.

With my email software (Pegasus; freeware) I can go beyond simple
kill files if I choose.  I could set up a filtering rule which would
dump any message that contains the pattern "donald wrote", for example.  
(There's a much stiffer performance penalty, though, when filtering
rules have to search the bodies of incoming messages instead of just
the headers.) 

There might be a more satisfactory alternative than killing
repetitively rebutted messages when a maillist or usenet group are
concerned, though.  Maybe a FAQ message (answers to "frequently
asked questions") could be constructed and periodically posted 
(or maintained at a web or ftp site); then replying to a repeated
argument could be accomplished simply by posting a reference to 
the relevant section of the FAQ.  And if enough members of the group 
are in agreement, they could rotate the responsibility of posting the
reference replies.

---Steve     (Steve Eppley    seppley at alumni.caltech.edu)