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Re: Usenet via e-mail
I took advantage of this article, which was printed (last year) in my
Internet servers monthly publication - West Coast Online and I then
subscribed to it for many months from Stanford University's Electronic
Library project. It's FREE, and will save you many hours of needless
wading and reading with your Usenet groups, you may subscribe to. I
think it's a very valid alternative to consider now, taking into
consideration all of the sicko anonymous crap, flames and such currently
appearing in so many of our Apple II newsgroups.
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Filtered Usenet
Stanford University's Electronic Library project provides free filtering
of Usenet news for individuals. By sending a simple profile to the
service, you receive only the news articles that match your interests
the service filters out the rest. The news is delivered by Internet
email at no cost.
How it works
Stanford University builds and maintains a database of recent messages
in Usenet groups. Stanford's database engine compares each message
against its collection of user search profiles. Matching messages are
forwarded to the user.
Subscribers use the filtering system through Internet email. Anyone can
subscribe by sending a structured message to netnews@db.stanford.edu, or
using the form on the web at http://sift.stanford.edu. Your message is a
series of commands to the automated service. For instance, by sending
the following message you would receive every 5 days excerpts of all
Usenet news messages about online information services.
To: netnews@db.stanford.edu
subscribe online information services
period 5
The body of each message must include a command to the service. You can
put more than one command in a message, but each must start on a new
line with no leading spaces. If a command is too long for one line,
continue on the next line, starting with a space or a tab. The system
ignores the subject field and the case (upper and lower) of the letters
in the message body.
The service addresses mail to the return address on your request
message, which your email system attaches automatically. Be sure to send
requests from your own account. You can refine your search profile using
the commands TYPE, LINES, PERIOD, EXPIRE, and THRESHOLD. Table 1 lists
their acceptable values. Suppose you request, for the next 200 days, the
first 10 lines of articles related to "food recipe" but not "fish"
(using a boolean search). Send this message:
To: netnews@db.stanford.edu
subscribe food recipe not fish
lines 10
expire 200
end
For the next 200 days you will find recipes in your email. The articles
will be limited to 10 lines, which is enough to give you a flavor. When
you want an entire article, use the GET command.
Big Responses
It saves time to view excerpts of articles. You can tell in a few lines
if an article interests you. This is particularly important when you
have to handle 50 or more messages a day. You can request an entire
article through email using GET, followed by one or more article numbers
in the message body. For example, you want the full text of article 3670
from the news.announce. conferences Usenet group. Send this message:
To: netnews@db.stanford.edu
get news.announce.conferences.3670
You can retrieve several articles in one message. For example: To:
netnews@db.stanford.edu
get misc.activism.progressive.11965
ca.politics.38420
Best results occur when you learn to tune the search profile to separate
the wheat from the chaff. Stanford's filter engine can help you refine
your profile using message templates.
When you like an article you read, notify the filter service with the
commands FEEDBACK and
LIKE. The service will use that article as a template for refining your
profile. FEEDBACK identifies the subscription profile and LIKE
identifies the template article. For example, this message says that
article news.announce. conferences.3670 should be a template for
subscription 1: To: netnews@db.stanford.edu
feedback 1 like news.announce.conferences.3670
The service conducts two types of search: Boolean keyword and weighted
text. You can manually tune your profile with the commands TYPE and
THRESHOLD. Experiment -- If you don't like the results, you can change
settings easily with the UPDATE command.
A boolean search compares the list of keywords in your profile to the
content of articles. Those matching are forwarded to you. For example,
the profile "travel hawaii" in the boolean mode matches articles that
contain both words "travel" and "hawaii." Both words must be present in
each forwarded article but the proximity or frequency of these words is
not considered. You can also use the boolean "not" operator to exclude
keywords.
For example, if you want to read about underwater fishing from any
sources except the newsgroups named alt, use the profile "underwater
fishing not alt."
The weighted text search is more refined. Your profile lists a number of
words and a threshold number. The search engine calculates a score based
on the frequency of these words in the article. If that score is higher
than the threshold number in your profile, you receive that article.
You control the amount of chaff you receive by setting the threshold. Be
careful! Set it too high, and you'll eliminate much of the wheat, too.
Set it too low and your in-tray could be inundated with garbage. Rather
than wait a day, you can test your threshold setting immediately by
using the SEARCH command.
Searching Yesterday's News
You can search for recent articles already in the Stanford database. The
SEARCH command looks at the database once with the given query.
Structure your profile as you would in a SUBSCRIBE command. For example,
to search for articles related to "information filtering," send: To:
netnews@db.stanford.edu
search information filtering threshold 54 end
Making changes
You can modify your filter profiles with the UPDATE and PROFILE
commands. UPDATE requires the subscription id (SID), assigned to each of
your filter profiles by the service. UPDATE must be followed by one or
more of the commands PERIOD, EXPIRE, THRESHOLD, LINES, TYPE or PROFILE.
PROFILE specifies a new list of keywords. For example, to update the
period and the threshold of your third profile:
To: netnews@db.stanford.edu
update 3 period 1 threshold 45
end
Additional Options
If your email system automatically tags your email signature to the end
of outgoing messages, use the END command to have the news filter ignore
any text that follows. The HELP command returns information on using the
server. CANCEL ends a subscription. LIST shows you all of your
subscriptions.
The Stanford Newsfilter service is on the worldwide web. You can find it
at: http://sift.stanford.edu. There you can fill out filter requests
using a form on the Web page. Some related papers on information
filtering technique are available by anonymous ftp at
db.stanford.edu/pub/yan.
The Stanford library offers a companion filter for computer science
technical reports (elib@cs.stanford.edu), and a search server at
http://elib. stanford.edu.
Table 1: Commands
Option Value Function
CANCEL SID End a subscription
END Marks end of the command, negates your signature EXPIRE in days
Subscription duration (default 9999) FEEDBACK SID Refine search profile,
use with LIKE GET article ID Retrieve entire article HELP Call the fire
brigade
LIKE article ID Identify template article for search LINES 1 to 60
Excerpt length (default 20) LIST Lists all subscriptions PERIOD in days
Search frequency (default 1) PROFILE keywords Modifies profile keywords,
follows UPDATE SEARCH profile Do one search of recent news SUBSCRIBE
profile Create a filter request, (use options). THRESHOLD 1-100 Minimum
relevancy score (default 60) TYPE weighted boolean Search technique
(default boolean "and") UNSUBSCRIBE Delete all profiles UPDATE SID
Modify profile
Note: The SID (Subscription ID) identifies a particular search profile.
You have one SID for each search profile you create with the SUBSCRIBE
command.
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I hope you'll all find this to be of some value!
Cheers,
Tom