Re: [Pan-users] What do the time frames mean on killed authors?

[Duncan]

Alan Meyer posted on Tue, 10 Jul 2012 18:03:07 -0700 as excerpted:

> I'd like to better understand the temporary kill feature.

I like your questions.  They imply some thinking that in turn provokes 
some thinking here, trying to answer. =:^)

> Let's say that it is July 15, 2012.  I look at a message dated May 15,
> 2012.  I decide that the author is someone I don't want to hear from but
> I'll try him again later, so I kill all messages from that author for
> six months.
> 
> My first question is, when is the six months up?  Is it six months from
> the day I applied the filter, July 15, or six months from the date of
> the message I was viewing when I applied the filter, May 15?

Knowing the mechanism by which the ignore/kill feature works helps to 
figure out the answers to these questions.

First of all, in pan an "ignore" aka "kill" is no more and no less than a 
score of -9999 or below.  (Similarly, a watch is +9999 or above.)  
Directly, all you've done is set a rule in pan's scorefile that tells it 
to score a particular set of matching posts, matched by from/author line 
in this case, in a particular fashion, -9999 in this case.

Second, what pan does with that score is then controlled by how you have 
pan configured.

Look on the view menu, header pane submenu.   Whatever you have set to 
match will be shown.  If you have it set to match -9999 (aka ignored) 
scores, they'll still display, as they will if you have it set to show 
matching (sub)threads instead of specific articles and a displayed post 
is above it in the subthread (for subthread-display) or anywhere in the 
thread (for thread-display).  Only if you have it set to specific article-
match display only, or the ignored article happens to be the top of the 
(sub)thread, will it not show up.

Now check pan's prefs, colors tab.  There, you can set the score-colors 
by numeric score zones corresponding to the same zones available in the 
view menu.

Now, still in pan prefs, if you have a new enough pan (0.136 or newer I 
think), check the actions tab (you won't have that tab at all if your pan 
is too old).  Would you like to have ignored articles automatically 
marked-read so they don't show in the unread count?  Maybe you want to 
have them automatically deleted?  This is where you configure that... as 
well as automatic caching/downloading of watched (or whatever, set it to 
everything above ignored if you like) posts, if you want that.


>From that explanation, you should begin to have an idea of the answers to 
these questions, but I'll answer them anyway.

If you take a look at the scorefile after you've applied an expiring 
score, you'll see it listed in the scorefile with the expiration.  Thus, 
anything matching that rule has the action applied... until the score 
expires.

Thus the answer to your question above is that any messages that pan 
finds that match this person's name, until the rule expires, get assigned 
the score of -9999 (ignored).  But that score isn't recorded with the 
message, just in the scorefile.  So it won't (or shouldn't, if it does 
there's a bug!) matter whether the message is a decade old or a day 
before you added the scoring rule or posted with a fake date 100 years 
into the future, it'll still get treated by pan as ignored, but ONLY 
until that score expires, at which point it will be scored by whatever 
unexpired scores still apply... if the post itself is still around at 
that point... it hasn't itself either expired or been deleted (by you, or 
by the automatic delete action you might have configured for ignored 
posts...).

> The next question is, are all messages from the user killed for six
> months, even if a date on the message falls on one side or the other of
> the six months time period?  Or is it only messages within the time
> period that are rendered invisible?
> 
> 
> Finally, what happens next?  At the end of six months (whenever that is)
> do all messages from that user become visible again, including the ones
> that were previously made invisible?  Or is it just the messages posted
> after the get out of jail date that become visible?

I believe I answered those questions above, as well.  What happens to old 
posts after the score expires depends on whether the posts are still 
around or not.  If they are, they'll appear, marked-read or not marked-
read, depending on whether you'd either manually or via automatic action 
marked them read.

New posts by that person will of course show up now as if the score had 
never been, since it's expired now, and will be subject to any unexpired 
rules just like any other post.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman