Google Groups "star" feature

Google Groups "star" feature

[Brian Adkins]

I'm attempting to transition from reading usenet via Google Groups to
using Gnus. One Google Groups feature I like is the ability to "star" a
thread so that I can easily see if a thread I'm interested in has new
posts.

What would be the easiest way to have a particular thread standout among
all the threads with new articles in Gnus?

Re: Google Groups "star" feature

[Timo Geusch]

Brian Adkins <brian@ubuntu.sys76.local> writes:

> I'm attempting to transition from reading usenet via Google Groups to
> using Gnus. One Google Groups feature I like is the ability to "star" a
> thread so that I can easily see if a thread I'm interested in has new
> posts.
>
> What would be the easiest way to have a particular thread standout among
> all the threads with new articles in Gnus?

Have a look at the scoring mechanism and bump up the score of the
threads you're interested in?

Re: Google Groups "star" feature

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:33:41 -0400 Brian Adkins <brian@ubuntu.sys76.local> wrote: 

BA> I'm attempting to transition from reading usenet via Google Groups to
BA> using Gnus. One Google Groups feature I like is the ability to "star" a
BA> thread so that I can easily see if a thread I'm interested in has new
BA> posts.

BA> What would be the easiest way to have a particular thread standout among
BA> all the threads with new articles in Gnus?

You can sort by thread total score, adjust the thread score, and it will
be sorted appropriately.  It's even better to adjust poster scores, so
people you like drive a thread's score higher and vice versa
automatically.

Ted

Re: Google Groups "star" feature

[Brian Adkins]

Timo Geusch <tnewsSPAMMENOT@unixconsult.co.uk> writes:

> Brian Adkins <brian@ubuntu.sys76.local> writes:
>
>> I'm attempting to transition from reading usenet via Google Groups to
>> using Gnus. One Google Groups feature I like is the ability to "star" a
>> thread so that I can easily see if a thread I'm interested in has new
>> posts.
>>
>> What would be the easiest way to have a particular thread standout among
>> all the threads with new articles in Gnus?
>
> Have a look at the scoring mechanism and bump up the score of the
> threads you're interested in?

Thanks, but that doesn't seem to work because when I open the group
again it seems to have forgotten about the thread score. I'm using the
tick feature which is helpful, but that's on a per-article basis instead
of per-thread.

Re: Google Groups "star" feature

[Brian Adkins]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> On Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:33:41 -0400 Brian Adkins <brian@ubuntu.sys76.local> wrote: 
>
> BA> I'm attempting to transition from reading usenet via Google Groups to
> BA> using Gnus. One Google Groups feature I like is the ability to "star" a
> BA> thread so that I can easily see if a thread I'm interested in has new
> BA> posts.
>
> BA> What would be the easiest way to have a particular thread standout among
> BA> all the threads with new articles in Gnus?
>
> You can sort by thread total score, adjust the thread score, and it will
> be sorted appropriately.  It's even better to adjust poster scores, so
> people you like drive a thread's score higher and vice versa
> automatically.
>
> Ted

Maybe we're talking about different things. After I'm done reading a
group, I press 'c' to mark everything as read and exit the group. At a
later point in time, when I reenter the group, Gnus will only show the
unread messages. It's at that time that it seems to have forgotten about
thread scores. I'll have to research scoring more and see if that will
do what I need to. I'd really prefer a simple boolean though i.e. I just
want to indicate the threads I'm interested in so new messages aren't
lost in the noise. Something like tick for threads I guess.

Re: Google Groups "star" feature

[Brian Adkins]

Timo Geusch <tnewsSPAMMENOT@unixconsult.co.uk> writes:

> Brian Adkins <brian@ubuntu.sys76.local> writes:
>
>> I'm attempting to transition from reading usenet via Google Groups to
>> using Gnus. One Google Groups feature I like is the ability to "star" a
>> thread so that I can easily see if a thread I'm interested in has new
>> posts.
>>
>> What would be the easiest way to have a particular thread standout among
>> all the threads with new articles in Gnus?
>
> Have a look at the scoring mechanism and bump up the score of the
> threads you're interested in?

Ah, I think the menu commands I used were only for the session. I used
the following:

I s f p

for "increase", "subject", "fuzzy", "permanent", and this modified the
score file, so I expect they'll "stick" now. I'm not sure what visual
indication I'll get in the summary (I'd prefer to sort by date rather
than score), but if there is none, the tick feature will probably work.

Re: Google Groups "star" feature

[Timo Geusch]

Brian Adkins <lojicdotcom@gmail.com> writes:

> Timo Geusch <tnewsSPAMMENOT@unixconsult.co.uk> writes:
>
>> Brian Adkins <brian@ubuntu.sys76.local> writes:
>>
>>> I'm attempting to transition from reading usenet via Google Groups to
>>> using Gnus. One Google Groups feature I like is the ability to "star" a
>>> thread so that I can easily see if a thread I'm interested in has new
>>> posts.
>>>
>>> What would be the easiest way to have a particular thread standout among
>>> all the threads with new articles in Gnus?
>>
>> Have a look at the scoring mechanism and bump up the score of the
>> threads you're interested in?
>
> Ah, I think the menu commands I used were only for the session. I used
> the following:
>
> I s f p
>
> for "increase", "subject", "fuzzy", "permanent", and this modified the
> score file, so I expect they'll "stick" now. I'm not sure what visual
> indication I'll get in the summary (I'd prefer to sort by date rather
> than score), but if there is none, the tick feature will probably work.

At least in this incarnation here, I get a '+' on the beginning of those
lines that have their scores bumped up. But this being gnus, you should
be able to customize this :). It's just that I'm in a fairly similar
situation as you (went back to gnus after using other newsreaders for a
few years) and I'm still tweaking things as well.

Re: Google Groups "star" feature

[Nicolas KOWALSKI]

Brian Adkins <brian@ubuntu.sys76.local> writes:

> Maybe we're talking about different things. After I'm done reading a
> group, I press 'c' to mark everything as read and exit the group. At a
> later point in time, when I reenter the group, Gnus will only show the
> unread messages. It's at that time that it seems to have forgotten about
> thread scores. I'll have to research scoring more and see if that will
> do what I need to. I'd really prefer a simple boolean though i.e. I just
> want to indicate the threads I'm interested in so new messages aren't
> lost in the noise. Something like tick for threads I guess.

Hellon

When I am interested in a message and/or its containing thread, I mark
it with '!'. When I come later and what to read the whole thread, on
the article I marked before, I just hit `A T' to get the whole
discussion displayed.

Does this help ?

-- 
Nicolas

Re: Google Groups "star" feature

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:58:10 -0400 Brian Adkins <brian@ubuntu.sys76.local> wrote: 

BA> I'd really prefer a simple boolean though i.e. I just want to
BA> indicate the threads I'm interested in so new messages aren't lost
BA> in the noise. Something like tick for threads I guess.

Digging into the docs for gnus-summary-kill-thread, I found that with a
negative prefix it will do what you want.  I have it bound to C-d, so I
do

C-u -1 C-d

It would probably be nice to make this a user-visible standalone
function that calls gnus-summary-kill-thread, does anyone want that?

Ted