Global Filters Explained These global filters use some complex regular expressions, and deserve a little more explanation. There are six global filters in the archive:

Hilite if 'subject' contains the Reg. Exp. "^Re:"

This filter hilites articles that are followups to an original articles, shades them dark gray, and lowers their score slightly. If you're sorting by score, this will cause new topics to appear above any older threads.

Kill if 'Xref' contains the Reg. Exp. "[^ ]+ [^ ]+ [^ ]+ [^ ]+ "

This filter removes any articles that are crossposted to four or more newsgroups. It's amazing how much clutter this single filter can remove. This filter may slow down article fetching (slightly) if you are not using the XOVER command to get article headers -- see Simon Fraser's page on this subject for an in-depth discussion.

Kill if 'subject' contains the Reg. Exp. "^(Re: )?[^a-z]+$"

This regular expression matches any subject that does not contain a lowercase letter -- in other words, subjects in ALL CAPS. This filter removes a lot of shouting and noise.

Kill if 'subject' contains the Reg. Exp. "^(Re: )?FS:?|WTB|for sale|\$\$\$|CA[S$]H|MONEY"

This filter removes 'for sale' articles, 'wanted to buy' articles, chain letter scams and messages from con artists.

Hilite if 'Xref' contains the string 'news.answers'

This filter hilites FAQs (Frequently Asked Question files), and brings them to the top of the window. This can be very useful when reading a new group, as the FAQ contains a lot of useful information. This filter is a little more reliable than the original "hilite if 'subject' contains 'FAQ'" filter.

Kill if 'subject' contains the Reg. Exp. "George Carlin's Seven Dirty Words....

This filter is deliberately designed to scroll off the right side of your screen, so that the actual list of naughty words isn't shown (and I've omitted the list here too -- you can double click on the filter to see and edit them, if you're so inclined). For those who "show killed articles," this filter takes things one step further: It hilites the article using light gray text on a light gray background, so that the text of the Subject is utterly unreadable. You probably wouldn't want to use this filter if you're reading alt.sex (for example), but it does remove some really off-topic articles from places like comp.sys.mac.system and news.groups.

It's no substitute for SurfWatch or a similar program if you're trying to protect your children; don't rely on this filter to protect the innocent (and keep in mind that the little tykes can access the list of dirty words by double-clicking on the filter).

Last update: 7 Jan 2004

MT-NewsWatcher Filters Archive This is an archive of filter files for Simon Fraser's MT-NewsWatcher, the latest and greatest member of the NewsWatcher family of news readers. MT-NewsWatcher allows you to add new filters by dragging and dropping them -- just drag a filter text clipping into the Filters List window, and the new filter is automatically created. Voila!

See Simon's online documentation for more information about MT-NewsWatcher and filtering.

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Filters	Description
rec.travel.europe	Thirty-eight subject filters for European countries, with hilite colors from their national flags, courtesy of Alan Zeleznikar. Thanks Alan!
Fake e-mail addresses	This global filter hilites articles from people who use "spam-blocking" e-mail addresses, to keep you from accidentally replying to the fake address.
Old articles never die...	...they just slowly turn yellow, with this set of global filters that change the hilite color depending on the article's age. Useful when reading a group for the first time, and for putting threads in chronological order. (For best results, put this set at the end of your global filters list, especially if you're using the "^Re:" regular expression filter found elsewhere in this archive.)
Big Ten school colors!	These eleven filters will hilite articles from Big Ten schools in their respective school colors. Quite possibly the most useless set of filters I've ever written. Note that some of these schools (including my alma mater) clearly did not choose their school colors for legibility.
* (global)	Six global filters, which are described at length here. These filters require MT-NewsWatcher version 2.3.1 or higher, so if you have an earlier version it's time to upgrade.