Scorefile

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Some Usenet newsreaders, especially in the Unix world, have tried to make it easier to find interesting postings and filter useless ones. To accomplish this, these newsreaders provide so-called scorefiles, which are sets of rules that, when triggered, alter the rating, or score, of a post. This is a refinement of the earlier kill file mechanism, providing values indicating the relative "goodness" of an article rather than the kill file's simpler yes/no display rules. For example, any post by author "Donald Knuth" might be automatically scored high, whereas one by "Script Kiddie" might be scored lower. Sometimes more than one rule is triggered by an individual post, making an otherwise hidden post visible or vice versa. The scores can then be used to sort the posts or even to delete all posts below a certain threshold. Scorefiles generally use some form of regular expression syntax and/or wildmats for pattern-matching.

In spite of their usefulness, scorefiles are an individual undertaking. Some users post their scorefiles regularly, but this is the exception: typically this data is not openly shared and collaborated on.

Examples of popular newsreaders that support scorefiles include 40tude Dialog, Pan, Slrn and XNews. Each client has its own variations of syntax for scoring, but the essentials remain the same. Questions about scorefiles are on-topic in the newsgroup news.software.readers.

[edit] Example of an Slrn scorefile

% A percentage sign indicates that what follows is a comment.

[*]  % This rule applies to all newsgroups
Score: -100  % The article's score is reduced by 100...
Subject: Make Money Fast  % ...if the subject header contains this phrase

[news.admin.net-abuse-sightings]  % This rule applies only in the specified newsgroup
Score: 200  % The article's score is increased by 200...
From: user@example\.com  % ...if the From header contains this expression

The two rules would be combined to increase the score by 100 if both were triggered by the same posting.