Cleaning up AAPC

When off-group trolls include aapc in their shenanigans, the resulting flood of posts can be irritating.

This helpfile tackles one way in which you can view the group more clearly - by dumping all crossposts from your newsreader.

This is a fairly radical filter to apply - crossposts and their threads can sometimes be benevolent, although almost always degenerate quickly. Note that the various suggestions below will eliminate *all* crossposts from your view - this includes all replies to crossposts, unless the replier has cut the Newsgroups: line down to a single newsgroup (alt.arts.poetry.comments, for example) alone.

How to Dump Crossposts

Essentially, you filter out any post which has a comma (,) in the Newsgroups: line. Alternatively, you can filter out any post which has a colon (:) in the Xref: line.

Some newsreaders have this capacity built in; some don't. If yours doesn't (see below), you need to run a piece of software like nfilter/Newsproxy (for Windows) alongside your Newreader. See the NewsProxy helpfile

Linux News Clients

Never presume to tell Linux users how to do something like this! I'm sure you can work it out for yourselves, in any case - just add a rule to your killfile which rejects posts with commas (,) in the Newsgroups: line, or which rejects colons (:) in the Xref: line.

Windows Newsreaders

There are two free Windows newsreaders which offer the option to exclude crossposts - you may want to switch to one of these, if you are not using one already:

  • Xnews
    Xnews is Open Source software, available from http://xnews.newsguy.com/.
  • To dump all crossposts from Xnews:
    1. Click on Special | Setup Xnews
    2. Select the Misc tab, and look for 'Newsgroup Options'
    3. Reduce the 'Kill articles crossposted to more than' value to 1
  • Gravity
    Gravity was a shareware product until commercial development was abandoned. It is now developed on a freeware basis. You can get hold of this newsreader from Tom's Gravity Pages, which you should read carefully.
  • To dump all crossposts from Gravity:
    1. Click on Tools | Rules
    2. Click on [Add]
    3. Give the rule a name (e.g. crossposts)
    4. Click the 'Conditions' tab
    5. Select 'Crossposted to more than..'
    6. Enter a value of 1
    7. Click on [Add Condition]
    8. Select the 'Actions' Tab
    9. Check the checkbox 'Discard'
    10. [OK]
  • FreeAgent/Agent
    FreeAgent offers no filtering/killfile; and the commercial version Agent cannot perform filtering on crossposts. You need to use a bit of software called NewsProxy (aka nfilter). See the NewsProxy helpfile.
  • Netscape/Outlook/Opera etc.
    It's difficult to track the changes in browser-based news clients, but Netscape and Opera users can certainly use NewsProxy. See the NewsProxy helpfile.