"..Cyclists and pedestrians in the UK are in greater danger than those in most other industrialised

[Tony Raven]

Roger Merriman wrote on 19/05/2007 08:33 +0100:
>
> depending on your newsreader you could just mark the thread/subthread as
> read, the problem with a kill file, is do you just kill file the one
> person, or the replys as well? what if the thread drifts off to
> something else?
>

That works sometimes where the whole thread is worthless but most of the
time its an interesting thread interspersed with troll posts and troll
wrestlers. At least kill filing the troll and discouraging the troll
wrestlers cleans it up a bit in sorting out the interesting stuff
whereas ignoring the subthread removes the good with the bad. What I
really want is a kill file filter that identifies and deletes responses
to a kill filed poster.

--
Tony

"The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there
is no good evidence either way."
- Bertrand Russell

 

[Tony Raven]

Peter Clinch wrote on 19/05/2007 09:19 +0100:
> The other view point, there is one you know... wrote:
>> On 14 May, 14:13, _ <[email protected]>
>
>>> Ratio of deaths while cycling (UK/Denmark) approx 8:1
>>
>> Wow, so the helmets are killing them!
>
> While it's fair to call that out as being a pretty useless statistic
> that doesn't actually tell you much, it does suggest that if the helmets
> aren't actively killing people, they're not doing a very good job of
> *saving* them. That thought is reinforced by the effects of compulsory
> wearing Down Under, where the helmet wearing rates went up from less
> than half to almost universal overnight and that *didn't* coincide with
> any clear reduction in serious head injury rates.

There was no clear reduction in the total number of serious head
injuries. The rates actually went up because the numbers cycling fell
and the number of head injuries didn't.

--
Tony

"The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there
is no good evidence either way."
- Bertrand Russell

 

[Tom Crispin]

On Thu, 17 May 2007 12:31:26 +0100, Tony Raven
<[email protected]> wrote:

>And kill filing Troll B saves me the trouble of having to identify and
>skip over his twaddle in the threads I want to read. Why not automate a
>task I would otherwise have to do repetitively?

What happens when somebody then responds to Troll B?

They get a series of, "don't feed the troll" follow-ups, ironically
often quoting a quote of a quote of a quote of Troll B!

Troll B's pretty harmless, and his straw man arguments can be very
amusing and also very annoying, but not too different from the helmet
threads.

 

[Tony Raven]

Tom Crispin wrote on 19/05/2007 09:41 +0100:
>
> What happens when somebody then responds to Troll B?
>
> They get a series of, "don't feed the troll" follow-ups, ironically
> often quoting a quote of a quote of a quote of Troll B!
>
> Troll B's pretty harmless, and his straw man arguments can be very
> amusing and also very annoying, but not too different from the helmet
> threads.

In that case amuse yourself by reading his posts and not kill filing
him. But please don't wrestle with him. Many trolls have destroyed or
nearly destroyed newsgroups not because of their troll posts but because
of the actions of the troll wrestlers who think they can change the
troll by reasoning or that others will be entertained by their
wrestling. Remember the first law of pig wrestling - the pig enjoys it
and you just get mucky.

--
Tony

"The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there
is no good evidence either way."
- Bertrand Russell

 

[Alan Braggins]

In article <[email protected]>, Tony Raven wrote:
> What I
>really want is a kill file filter that identifies and deletes responses
>to a kill filed poster.

How radically are you prepared to change the rest of your newsreading
environment to get it? I'm sure gnus could do it, so long as you are
prepared to write some lisp....

 

[Tony Raven]

Alan Braggins wrote on 19/05/2007 10:43 +0100:
> In article <[email protected]>, Tony Raven wrote:
>> What I
>> really want is a kill file filter that identifies and deletes responses
>> to a kill filed poster.
>
> How radically are you prepared to change the rest of your newsreading
> environment to get it? I'm sure gnus could do it, so long as you are
> prepared to write some lisp....

I could probably do it with a rule of If Body Text contains <troll> mark
message as read/delete message. The only problem is that Body Text
filters tend to be slow compared with header filters. What is really
needed is If first line of Body Text etc

--
Tony

"The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there
is no good evidence either way."
- Bertrand Russell

 

[Roger Merriman]

Tony Raven <[email protected]> wrote:

> Roger Merriman wrote on 19/05/2007 08:33 +0100:
> >
> > depending on your newsreader you could just mark the thread/subthread as
> > read, the problem with a kill file, is do you just kill file the one
> > person, or the replys as well? what if the thread drifts off to
> > something else?
> >
>
> That works sometimes where the whole thread is worthless but most of the
> time its an interesting thread interspersed with troll posts and troll
> wrestlers. At least kill filing the troll and discouraging the troll
> wrestlers cleans it up a bit in sorting out the interesting stuff
> whereas ignoring the subthread removes the good with the bad. What I
> really want is a kill file filter that identifies and deletes responses
> to a kill filed poster.

my macsoup does that, i don't use it but it can kill file person X and
all responces to X

roger

 

[Tom Crispin]

On Sat, 19 May 2007 10:29:29 +0100, Tony Raven
<[email protected]> wrote:

>In that case amuse yourself by reading his posts and not kill filing
>him. But please don't wrestle with him. Many trolls have destroyed or
>nearly destroyed newsgroups not because of their troll posts but because
>of the actions of the troll wrestlers who think they can change the
>troll by reasoning or that others will be entertained by their
>wrestling. Remember the first law of pig wrestling - the pig enjoys it
>and you just get mucky.

The World would be a duller place without pigs. We wouldn't have
bacon sarnies for a start.

I haven't replied to Troll B for at least 3 months.

 

[The other view point, there is one you know...]

On 19 May, 09:19, Peter Clinch <[email protected]> wrote:
> The other view point, there is one you know... wrote:
>
> > On 14 May, 14:13, _ <[email protected]>
> >> Ratio of deaths while cycling (UK/Denmark) approx 8:1
>
> > Wow, so the helmets are killing them!
>
> While it's fair to call that out as being a pretty useless
> statistic that doesn't actually tell you much, it does suggest that
> if the helmets aren't actively killing people, they're not doing a
> very good job of *saving* them. That thought is reinforced by the
> effects of compulsory wearing Down Under, where the helmet wearing
> rates went up from less than half to almost universal overnight and
> that *didn't* coincide with any clear reduction in serious head
> injury rates.
> In the UK, girls wear at twice the rate of boys. Serious head
> injury rates are the same for each group though. How do you
> account for that, if helmets are really making people safer?
>
> Pete.
> --
> Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
> Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
> Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
> net [email protected] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

I have to say, that the stats and data you provide, do by themselves
point to the helmet being not much useful.

The data i want to see is how may A&E admissions are due to cycle
injuries;
How many had head injuries,
How many had helmets
How many did the helmet lessen the injury
and for some in here, how many did it worsen the injuries

other stats are too black and white and are manipulated to suite a
point of view.

 

[_]

On 19 May 2007 05:03:13 -0700, The other view point, there is one you
know... wrote:

> On 19 May, 09:19, Peter Clinch <[email protected]> wrote:
>> The other view point, there is one you know... wrote:
>>
>>> On 14 May, 14:13, _ <[email protected]>
>>>> Ratio of deaths while cycling (UK/Denmark) approx 8:1
>>
>>> Wow, so the helmets are killing them!
>>
>> While it's fair to call that out as being a pretty useless
>> statistic that doesn't actually tell you much, it does suggest that
>> if the helmets aren't actively killing people, they're not doing a
>> very good job of *saving* them. That thought is reinforced by the
>> effects of compulsory wearing Down Under, where the helmet wearing
>> rates went up from less than half to almost universal overnight and
>> that *didn't* coincide with any clear reduction in serious head
>> injury rates.
>> In the UK, girls wear at twice the rate of boys. Serious head
>> injury rates are the same for each group though. How do you
>> account for that, if helmets are really making people safer?
>>
>> Pete.
>> --
>> Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
>> Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
>> Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
>> net [email protected] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/
>
> I have to say, that the stats and data you provide, do by themselves
> point to the helmet being not much useful.
>
> The data i want to see is how may A&E admissions are due to cycle
> injuries;
> How many had head injuries,
> How many had helmets
> How many did the helmet lessen the injury
> and for some in here, how many did it worsen the injuries
>
> other stats are too black and white and are manipulated to suite a
> point of view.

Uhmmm.

"...too black and white...".

Is it no surprise that a pro-helmet zealot wants to avoid clearly presented
facts?

Is it no surprise thet he wants to look at raw numbers and ignore rates?

Methinks his "other point of view" is the one gathered from under a bridge.

 

[Mark Thompson]

> The data i want to see is how may A&E admissions are due to cycle
> injuries;
> How many had head injuries,
> How many had helmets
> How many did the helmet lessen the injury
> and for some in here, how many did it worsen the injuries

There are several problems here. First off is that you're asking a
combination of not enough questions, the wrong questions, and questions to
which no one knows (and cannot know) the answer to.

Secondly, cycling is so safe that it's very difficult to get a decent
number of head-injured cyclists. This is part of the reason why many of
the studies are so poor.

Thirdly, you still seem to assume that cycling is so unsafe that protective
clothing is desirable. This may be true for certain forms of leisure
cycling, but I suggest that you shift your efforts to pedestrians if you've
mainly concerned with the transport side of things.

> are too black and white and are manipulated to suite a
> point of view.

How have they been manipulated?

 

[Tim Woodall]

On Sat, 19 May 2007 10:50:34 +0100,
Tony Raven <[email protected]> wrote:
> Alan Braggins wrote on 19/05/2007 10:43 +0100:
>> In article <[email protected]>, Tony Raven wrote:
>>> What I
>>> really want is a kill file filter that identifies and deletes responses
>>> to a kill filed poster.
>>
>> How radically are you prepared to change the rest of your newsreading
>> environment to get it? I'm sure gnus could do it, so long as you are
>> prepared to write some lisp....
>
> I could probably do it with a rule of If Body Text contains <troll> mark
> message as read/delete message. The only problem is that Body Text
> filters tend to be slow compared with header filters. What is really
> needed is If first line of Body Text etc
>
In theory you can do it using just the headers - whenever you see a post
that you want to killfile the responses to you add a new killfile entry
that killfiles any post that has the msgid in its references.

slrn is almost there. But there's no way to tell it to add a new
score entry and, although it has scores that expire, AFAIAA, there's
no way to automatically clean up the scorefile.

One day I'll add the necessary code - but it's been one day for about
five years now ...

Tim.

e.g.
Instead of:
[*]
Score: =-9999
%Expires:
% Subject: Re: An unusual one
From: Matt B <"matt\.bourke"@nospam\.london\.com>
% References: <53k2i1F1t2bggU2@mid\.individual\.net>
% Xref: einstein\.home\.woodall\.me\.uk
% uk\.rec\.cycling:348052
% Newsgroup: uk\.rec\.cycling
%EOS

I'd have:

[*]
Score: =-9999,-9999
%Expires:
% Subject: Re: An unusual one
From: Matt B <"matt\.bourke"@nospam\.london\.com>
% References: <53k2i1F1t2bggU2@mid\.individual\.net>
% Xref: einstein\.home\.woodall\.me\.uk uk\.rec\.cycling:348052
% Newsgroup: uk\.rec\.cycling
%EOS

And then followups would be given a score of -9999 as well as the original post.

I already do the same thing for followups to my posts:
[*]
Score: 1000
%Expires:
% Subject: Obtaining details of old utility debt
% From: nichughes@mailandnews\.com
References: [email protected]
% Xref: einstein\.home\.woodall\.me\.uk uk\.legal:115038 uk\.finance:2943
% Newsgroup: uk\.finance
%EOS

but there's currently no way for me to do the same thing for posts I make via
google.


--
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = - @B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t,"
and there was light.

http://tjw.hn.org/ http://www.locofungus.btinternet.co.uk/

 

[del]

On Saturday 19 May 2007 14:24 Tim Woodall, wrote:

> no way to automatically clean up the scorefile.
cleanscore on a cronjob?
--
del

 

[Ian Smith]

On 19 May 2007, <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> The data i want to see is how may A&E admissions are due to cycle
> injuries;
> How many had head injuries,

OK, that could be gathered.

> How many had helmets

That could be gathered, but without knowing population wearing rates
it's going to be a useless number.

> How many did the helmet lessen the injury
> and for some in here, how many did it worsen the injuries

And how on earth do you propose determining that?

regards, Ian SMith
--
|\ /| no .sig
|o o|
|/ \|

 

[Simon Brooke]

in message <1hy9ccu.c7foevmhx74aN%[email protected]>, Roger Merriman
('[email protected]') wrote:

> Tony Raven <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Peter Clinch wrote on 17/05/2007 09:54 +0100:
>> > Roger Merriman wrote:
>> >
>> >> just kill the subthread or thread if it gets into a "it is!" "it is
>> >> not!" type. or mark as unread. a killfile is very blunt tool.
>> >
>> > But still appropriate in some cases. Has Mike Vandeman, hater of
>> > mountain bikes, /ever/ posted anything on a Usenet group that's worth
>> > reading? I really don't think so, so he's in the killfile. And so
>> > on.
>>
>> And kill filing Troll B saves me the trouble of having to identify and
>> skip over his twaddle in the threads I want to read. Why not automate a
>> task I would otherwise have to do repetitively?
>
> depending on your newsreader you could just mark the thread/subthread as
> read, the problem with a kill file, is do you just kill file the one
> person, or the replys as well? what if the thread drifts off to
> something else?

Depends on the severity of the troll. There is one troll (who does not use
this group) so abysmal that I killfile any post which references any post
of his. Matt B grade trolls, however, don't merit that degree of killing.

But, frankly, life is to short to even bother with skipping over Matt B
posts. I have my computer do that for me.

--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; Usenet: like distance learning without the learning.

 

[Simon Brooke]

in message <[email protected]>, Alan Braggins
('[email protected]') wrote:

> In article <[email protected]>, Tony Raven wrote:
>>What I
>>really want is a kill file filter that identifies and deletes responses
>>to a kill filed poster.
>
> How radically are you prepared to change the rest of your newsreading
> environment to get it? I'm sure gnus could do it, so long as you are
> prepared to write some lisp....

Most news readers can do it. You just need to kill on the 'references'
header. I used to do it in Gnus and now do it in KNode.

--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; Women are from Venus. Men are from Mars. Lusers are from Uranus.

 

[Simon Brooke]

in message <[email protected]>, The
other view point, there is one you know...
('[email protected]') wrote:

> How many did the helmet lessen the injury
> and for some in here, how many did it worsen the injuries

How on earth could anyone tell, post injury, whether the helmet had
ameliorated or aggravated it?

--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

Due to financial constraints, the light at the end of the tunnel
has been switched off.

 

[Alan Braggins]

In article <[email protected]>, Simon Brooke wrote:
>in message <[email protected]>, Alan Braggins
>('[email protected]') wrote:
>
>> In article <[email protected]>, Tony Raven wrote:
>>>What I
>>>really want is a kill file filter that identifies and deletes responses
>>>to a kill filed poster.
>>
>> How radically are you prepared to change the rest of your newsreading
>> environment to get it? I'm sure gnus could do it, so long as you are
>> prepared to write some lisp....
>
>Most news readers can do it. You just need to kill on the 'references'
>header. I used to do it in Gnus and now do it in KNode.

It's a bit trickier than that if the troll uses message-ids of a form
which don't include a username and from a host shared with people you
_do_ want to read.
For example, looking at the References: of this post, matching
gododdin.internal.jasmine.org.uk or [email protected] would be
easy, matching one particular poster from mid.individual.net but not
others less so.

Wanting to kill immediate followups but not whole subthreads also
complicates things a little.

 

[Ekul Namsob]

Roger Merriman <[email protected]> wrote:

> Tony Raven <[email protected]> wrote:

> > And kill filing Troll B saves me the trouble of having to identify and
> > skip over his twaddle in the threads I want to read. Why not automate a
> > task I would otherwise have to do repetitively?
>
> depending on your newsreader you could just mark the thread/subthread as
> read, the problem with a kill file, is do you just kill file the one
> person, or the replys as well?

I killfile the thread. That way I don't see the replies. Indeed, I've
recently set up a filter to kill all posts from a particular poster and
all replies to the individual.

> what if the thread drifts off to
> something else?

Such as goats for instance? I reckon I'll survive.

Cheers,
Luke


--
Lincoln City 0-2 Southend United (AET)
Swansea City 2-2 Southend United
We went up twice with Tilly and Brush

 

[Ekul Namsob]

Tony Raven <[email protected]> wrote:

> Roger Merriman wrote on 19/05/2007 08:33 +0100:
> >
> > depending on your newsreader you could just mark the thread/subthread as
> > read, the problem with a kill file, is do you just kill file the one
> > person, or the replys as well? what if the thread drifts off to
> > something else?
> >
>
> That works sometimes where the whole thread is worthless but most of the
> time its an interesting thread interspersed with troll posts and troll
> wrestlers. At least kill filing the troll and discouraging the troll
> wrestlers cleans it up a bit in sorting out the interesting stuff
> whereas ignoring the subthread removes the good with the bad. What I
> really want is a kill file filter that identifies and deletes responses
> to a kill filed poster.

That's exactly what I do. MacSOUP can auto-kill by subthread. I'm sure
some Windows newsreaders must do the same.

Cheers,
Luke


--
Lincoln City 0-2 Southend United (AET)
Swansea City 2-2 Southend United
We went up twice with Tilly and Brush