Killfile: Was all sorts of rants and ramblings regarding free speech, rants, mo

Ok, for those of us still in the computer dark ages, will someone explain to
me what a killfile is and how to use it?

3B^2

[quoted original message omitted]

On Mon, 29 Apr 2002 12:23:04 -0700, "Brian Bilderback"
<bbilderback@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Ok, for those of us still in the computer dark ages, will someone

Some e-mail programs -- and Hotmail is one of them -- allow you to set
the system so that any and all incoming posts from a given individual are
automatically deleted. More sophisticated programs will let you ignore
particular subject headings, although Hotmail cannot.

Click on the "Block" link near the top of a message, and that should show you
how it works.

> At 12:23 PM -0700 4/29/02, Brian Bilderback wrote:

Well, its actually a Dark Age Computer thing when you get down to it. Not many
main stream mail tools use them as they go for ultra simple in terms of
features.

A kill file is essentially a filter list that automagically deletes any mail
from a particular person, topic, domain, or what ever you want to use as a
chriteria. Its a filter list in other mail tool terms.

In the the old days of unix mail, UUCP and NNTP feeds mail and news readers
typically had a function that had a list of parameters in a 'kill file', hence
the term. Folks would be able to filter out individuals that offended them,
say anything with "kibo" in it if they had thin skin or hated massive.sig
files. In the modern days of Spam, it's a bit harder to use given the massive
number of sources of spam. One is almost tempted towards dumping mail from all
.kr or.ru domains in some cases...

On Mon, 29 Apr 2002 12:23:04 -0700, "Brian Bilderback"
> <bbilderback@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Ok, for those of us still in the computer dark ages, will someone

A killfile (or twit list, as it's sometimes called) is a Net name for a
specific form of e-mail filter.

An e-mail filter allows you to do things with messages based on specific
criteria. My e-mailer/Usenet reader is called Agent. I filter all my
e-mail
with it. For instance, anything with a "To" address of
gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
(and several other permutations) goes into a folder called "GZG Mailing List".
So, my mailing list stuff gets segregated from e-mail addressed to me
personally, and from the stuff going to the Playtest List, etc. I don't have
to do this manually, it does it at the moment the program downloads
e-mail
from my ISP.

All good e-mail programs allow this, with varying levels of ability.
Even Microsoft Outlook allows it. For that matter, Hotmail has filtering too
but
it's often looking at just the name of the person who e-mailed you. It
doesn't have the ability to kill whole threads.

Agent allows me to set various levels of filtering, and filter on a whole
bunch of different things, including items from the header that you might not
usually see in your e-mail messages. It also lets me put expiry dates on
a filter. I can rank my filters. Anything not directly addressed to me goes
into a "held" folder, but only after it fails to get caught on the GZG Mailing
List filter and the GZG Playtest List filter.

"Killfile" is the net name given to the filter used to for people and threads
that you really don't want to read. Most folks set up a filter for people they
don't like that throws those messages straight into their trash folder (or
deletes them immediately). Some don't like doing that. Instead, they put it
into a "held" folder where they can manually delete the messages. Either way,
if someone bugs you enough that you don't want to see their posts ever again,
you add them to the "delete immediately without downloading from the Mail
Server" filter, known colloquially as a "killfile".

Oh, and the standard way of telling someone you have killfiled them is to send
them a message with the term "*plonk*" in it. That's the sound of them hitting
the bottom of your "kill file". As in, "Welcome to my kill file, twit.
*plonk*"

I hope this explains it to you... E-mail me off list if you have any
other questions about Killfiles.

> Brian Bilderback wrote:

Oh, sorry. I get wrapped up in the vocabulary, being the geek that I am.
(8-)

A 'killfile' is actually a term I'm borrowing from news readers. It's
essentially a 'filter.' For most traditional UNIX news readers, what you could
do was hit a key so that all the posts in a certain subject or from a certain
person would be marked as 'deleted' so you would never see them. If you wanted
to do so permanently, the information for the filter was kept in a 'killfile.'

JGH

Thanks to all for the quick response.  I am familiar with e-mail
filters, I just never had heard of them being called Killfiles.

3B^2

Alas, I don't have one. But my delete key works!

On Mon, 29 Apr 2002 15:29:01 -0400 "Damond Walker"
> <dwalker@syncreticsoft.com> writes:

From: "Glenn M Wilson" <triphibious@juno.com>
Subject: Re: Killfile: Was all sorts of rants and ramblings regarding
free speech, rants, mo

> Alas, I don't have one. But my delete key works!

Muscle memory is a good thing....;)

Damo