Updated 1993 by SIC.
Original by Scott Chase.
With most news readers, it is possible for you to selectively ignore articles withcertain title words, or by a certain author. This feature is implemented as a "killfile", that contains instructions to your news reader about how to filter out unwantedarticles. The exact details on how to specify articles you want to ignore variesfrom program to program, so you should check the documentation for your particularnews reader. Some examples are given below for a few common news readers. Ifyour news reader does not support kill files, you may want to consider upgrading to onethat does. Some of the more popular news readers that support kill files are rn, trn,nn, xrn, gnews, and gnus.
Let's say that you wish to `kill' all posts made by a certain user. Using the`rn' or `trn' news reader, you would type a [CTRL]-K while in read mode to begin editingthe kill file, and then type the following:
/From: username@sitename.com/h:jThis will look for articles that come with "From: username@sitename.com" in the header,junk them, and then display the subject lines of titles that just got zapped.
To kill articles by Subject titles, you would type something like this:
/: *The Big Bang Never Happened/:j /: *Space Potatoes Have Inertia/:jWhen finished, save the kill file in the normal manner for the editor you're using.
In trn 3.0 and higher you can use the faster command
/username@sitename\.com/f:jto kill all of username's postings. In trn change the 'j' to ',' to kill all thereplies as well. Note the '\' to escape the '.'. This is needed in any searchstring in a kill file (although they usually work if you forget). Also in [t]rn youcan simply hit K to automatically killfile the current subject without directly editingthe file.
For the `nn' news reader, type a capital K when viewing the contents of anewsgroup. nn will then ask you a few questions on whether it is a Subject or aName, duration of time that the posts are to be killed, etc. Simply answer thequestions accordingly.
There's a lot more to it, of course, when you become proficient. You can kill allarticles cross-posted to specific groups, for example, or kill any article with aparticular name or phrase appearing anywhere in the header. A good primer is in the"rn KILL file FAQ" which appears periodically in news.answers. You should also checkthe man pages for your particular news reader.