Scoring USENET With slrn
I use slrn to read news.
I’m reading USENET again because of shell and Ruby programming. I can’t read USENET, though. I must use a scorefile.
My setup is very simple. It is a standard SLRN with scoring turned on is all. I’m not one for changing key bindings, or a great many patches, since I’ll eventually lose my custom rig somehow and have to start over.
set scorefile "etc/slrn/score"
set sorting_method 5
set min_high_score 100
set color_by_score 1
color high_score "red" "black"
And here’s the start of a scorefile.
[comp.unix.shell]
Score: 101
From: enrio@online.no
Score: 101
From: Stephane CHAZELAS
Now a thread with one of those posters is brought to the top of the list, and their posts have a little bit of color in the heading.
Reading a group is a matter of hitting the “!” key to go to the next high-score message. I choose posters that respond with correct answers and enough context to understand the question. Cuts through a lot of news very quickly.
This doesn’t mean that other posters do not get read, I’ll read another post in the thread, maybe two, and then move on. When there are no high score posts, I mark everything read and move on.
I like this binary scoring system. Anything that had more of a gradient would be embarassing to share, since it states and opinion. This is a scoring system that only says one nice thing about a poster.
Notes: Show me your scorefile.