Re: [Pan-users] killfile troll in watched thread??

[Duncan]

Beartooth posted on Wed, 04 Dec 2013 17:53:36 +0000 as excerpted:

> On another list, I have concluded that a certain poster (call him P) is
> posting unmitigated trollery to a thread I value (and have told Pan to
> watch).
> 
> When I right-click on his latest and tell Pan "Ignore author," I
> get a weird error message which seems to amount to a declaration of
> inability, even though I am asking it to score an author this time.
> 
> Is Pan confused, or am I?

Well, if you'd have posted the error message...

In general, it's possible to do, but the ordering of the rules makes a 
difference, and you may have to hand-edit the scorefile to get it to do 
what you want.  I'm unsure if you're up to taking on that challenge, or 
perhaps I should say, no offense intended, but I'm not sure I'm up to 
explaining it in the detail it sometimes takes to talk you through 
complex issues.

But I/you/we could try, and you can save a backup copy of your scorefile 
somewhere, to copy over the one we're working on if we screw it up too 
badly. =:^]


At a high level the situation is this:

1) Normal scoring is incremental: Each matching incremental score 
condition that applies to a message will increase or decrease the score 
for that message by some number of points, based on the score assigned to 
that condition.  Unscored posts start at zero, with scores going up or 
down from there.

So for example you might have a score that gives all messages in a 
particular group a +500, because you're interested in that group.  Then 
there's a particular subject keyword you're interested in, which gets 
another +1000, but some other keyword that's scored -300.  Then there's a 
particular author that you don't like (but not by enough to killfile), so 
you score anything by that author at -1200.  And you have pan set to auto-
mark-read anything with negative points so you don't have to see it.

Now say this author (-1200) posts to this group (+500), with a subject 
matching both of the keywords scored above (+1000)(-300).

0-1200+500+1000-300=0:  The sum of all applying incremental scores for 
that message would be zero, so it's as if none apply at all.  The message 
will be treated as an ordinary unscored message.

BUT:

2) Absolute scoring is also possible.  As pan applies its scores, it adds 
and subtracts incremental scores as it comes to them, but if it ever sees 
an absolute assignment score, it sets that score regardless of the 
incremental scores it might have previously applied, and stops further 
score processing for that message.

AND:

3) Watched and ignored work with absolute scores: =9999 and =-9999 
respectively.

So now let's change our example to add some absolute scores.  Let's say 
instead of that +1000 for subject keyword, you decided to watch anything 
with that keyword.  In the scorefile, that's set as =9999.

But we'll also say that you REALLY didn't like that particular author, 
and set him to ignore: =-9999.


Now what happens to that message depends on the scoring rules order:

Regardless of the incremental rules, if pan reaches the =-9999/ignored 
rule before it reaches the =9999/watched rule, that will match and it'll 
stop processing further scoring rules for that message, so the message 
will be =-9999/ignored because pan won't ever reach the =9999/watched 
rule further down.

But if pan reaches the =9999/watched rule first, pan will set that and 
stop processing further scoring rules for that message, so it'll be =9999 
regardless of the =-9999/ignored rule further down.


So what I suspect pan was telling you was exactly that:  Since the new 
rule you were creating would be added below the existing watch-thread 
rule, pan would never get to the ignore-author rule as the =9999/watched 
would stop further processing, because it *IS* an absolute =9999, NOT an 
incremental +9999, which would let other rules apply as well.


So to get what you want, you can do one of two things, depending on the 
exact result you're actually looking for.

1) If you want to ignore that author REGARDLESS, you can create the 
ignore rule and edit the scorefile to ensure it appears BEFORE any watch 
rules.

(Conversely, if you want watch rules to override ignore rules, they must 
come first.)

2) If instead you still want other scores to be able to affect watches/
ignores, then you can edit the scorefile to make them +9999/-9999 
respectively, instead of =9999/=-9999.

Of course if you do this, you might want to actually use an even stronger 
value than 9999, depending on how strongly you /actually/ want to watch 
/everything/ in that thread and/or /actually/ want to ignore that author 
/totally/.  If you want to be SURE to ignore that author, you might set 
-20000 or even -30000 so that even a couple ordinary incremental watches 
(+9999) will still leave the score below -9999, so it'll still be 
ignored.  Alternatively, if you only /almost/ want to ignore that author, 
then you might set an incremental -9998, so it'll be negative scored but 
not /quite/ ignored, unless some other negative scoring brings the score 
down even further.


Personally, I'd probably do the former, still using absolutes, but just 
order them the way I wanted, which would most likely be to ignore the 
author at top priority, and only if a message isn't ignored, watch it 
based on the thread.  So I'd edit my scorefile to ensure that the ignore 
came before the watch.


Hope that explanation helps. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman