newsbin.com

Hi - sorry to be a pain, this is an old problem that I still can't get to work - maybe I don't understand how to use the tools properly.

I just upgraded to nb 6.80B10 - build 4981 on a windows 7 machine. I'm having trouble with using filter profiles to control what records I see when I show posts for a particular group. For example:

Downloaded the group a.b.automobile pictures - 3281 records display. Created a new filter profile with the instruction:
Accept if subject contains Oldsmobile - which displays 66 records

Then deleted that condition and instead had the profile:
Accept if poster contains Old Codger - which displayed 1 record

I modified the profile to include both conditions:
Accept if subject contains Oldsmobile
Accept if poster contains Old Codger
and expected 67 records, but the filter displayed no records.

I thought that multiple conditions would have the effect of .or. but it seems to be .and.

Have I misunderstood how to use filter profiles?

DaDane

Try just "Codger" and see if that works.

If it does you can then try "Old.*Codger" because the filters use regular expressions.

Thanks for the reply. Either "old codger" or "Old.*Codger" displays the posts properly. But either combined with subject "oldsmobile" produces no listings.

Really confused about this. Does the combination of the two of this arguments work for you?
DaDane

1 - I downloaded headers for that group. All of them about 60K headers.

2 - I searched for oldsmobile and had 621 hits.

3 - I make a filter profile and added a subject accept for "oldsmobile". Then applied the filter and had 621 hits.

4 - Looking at the posters, I didn't see a "Codger" but I did see a "Max".

5 - I added a "Accept Poster" of "Max" then re-applied the filters and now have 299 pictures all posted by "Max".

6 - I then added "Rich" and "Dave" to poster accept and now have 609 hits for oldsmobile which include posts from "Max", "Rich" and "Dave".

For a filter profile to apply all conditions need to be met. If you're trying to make it "oldsmobile" OR "codger" the profiles don't work that way.

Thank you - that was my fundamental mistake - I thought these profile filter entries acted independently in all cases. They don't, as I now understand it, only sometimes - that's what's confusing to me:

I downloaded all the headers for the group.

Set the profile filter to accept only subjects = oldsmobile - 166 records

Set the profile filter to accept only subjects = studebaker - 81 records

Set the profile filter with separate entries for oldsmobile and studebaker - 247 records.

When the objects are the same (in this case subjects) either filter entry will produce results --- either this or that

When the objects are different (subject and poster) only records that match both criteria will produce results ----must be this and that.

Is that the intention of how profile filters are supposed to work?

DaDane

Let me think about it. I can see where you might expect "Oldsmobile" OR "Codger" to work. Because within the subjects and within the posters it acts like OR. It's only between poster AND Subject that it's AND.

Typically I find "AND" for poster to be more useful but to be consistent, posters should just be treated like another subject filter but just on another field.

The downside if I change this is that you can't filter IN just the posters you want with the subjects you want. It works the way it works because I typically want to only see matching subjects from posters I like. By changing it, it'll be all posts from posters I like whether it matches the subject or not. I'm not sure I want to change this when I think about it.

Thanks for thinking through this "out loud" so I can see the reason this works the way it works. I've usually used profile filters differently - to screen out what I know I don't want to see 'cause I'm not always sure what I do want to see. For topics that I know I want to see, I'll set up Watch lists and then from that choose posters I trust.

There are groups, however, where even though there is an occasional surprise from someone I've never heard of before, there's one or two stalwarts whose posts I always want to see. Guess I could use a filter to choose their posts, then when I'm finished with those, I can turn it off to see what else is there.

Thanks again for taking the time to get me to understand.

DaDane