Newsreader scoring

most newsreaders provide some means of scoring or filtering articles
in newsgroups by analyzing message header fields, e.g. from, subject,
message-id, references, injection-info, xpost, path, etc., and where
text strings are found matching that newsreader's user-defined rules,
scoring and actions are applied; 40tude dialog's help "scoring rules":

40tude Dialog > Help[F1] > Index > Scoring Rules > Scoring/Actions Syntax
>Scoring and actions is one of Dialog's most powerful features. The syntax
>and actually most of the code is from Jurgen Haible's excellent local mail-
>and newsserver Hamster.
>What is Scoring?
>Scoring is the process of assigning a number between -9999 and +9999 to a
>message by applying scoring rules to the message. A scoring rule usually
>analyzes one header field of the message and if it this header field matches
>a certain text, a score value is assigned. For example, you can create a
>scoring rule that assign the highest score value +9999 to all messages that
>have your email address in the From header field, so that your messages
>always receive a score of +9999.
>The score value is shown in the header list in green for positive scores
>and in red for negative scores:
>Note that the list of headers can be sorted by score (with or without
>threading), so scoring can be used to visually organize and separate
>important from unimportant messages.
>...
>Usenet articles are scored twice in Dialog. When you get headers in a
>group the scoring rules are applied to the available, limited number of
>headers, however when you retrieve the complete body of the message, the
>message is scored again and this time all headers can be scored.
>The scoring and action rules are stored together in one file, the score
>file, which you can access by selecting Settings, Scoring and actions
>from Dialog's main menu.
[end quoted excerpt]

e.g., to demote cross-posted articles & darken subject header display:

  [*]
  =-1111 Xpost %>1
  !setcolor(navy;maroon) Xpost %>1
  =-2222 Xpost %>2
  !setcolor(olive;gray) Xpost %>2
  =-3333 Xpost %>3
  !setcolor(gray;olive) Xpost %>3

also, to demote "noisy" news servers in specific newsgroups:

  [alt.culture.usenet]
  =-4444 Message-ID server01 server02 server03 . . .
  =-4455 References server01 server02 server03 . . .
  =-4466 Header {^(Injection-Info:)} server04 server05 server06 . . .
  =-4477 Header {^(NNTP-Posting-Host:)} server07 server08 server09 . . .
  =-4488 Header {^(Path:)} server10 server11 server12 . . .

ignore flags can be set to help reduce "noise" in specific newsgroups
or heirarchies being plagued by troll farm "regulars", spammers, etc.:
 
  [alt.culture.*]
  !ignore,markread Message-ID server01 server02 server03 . . .

additional scoring rules may be desirable in some cases (e.g. scoring
from, subject, or other header fields), but simply ignoring articles/
threads by pressing the "i" key probably works better for most users
and will keep the "filters.dat" file compact and simple; it's easy to
test expressions using 40tude Dialog > Settings > Scoring and actions

40tude Dialog v2.0.15.1 (2005-2-7):
https://www.barghahn-online.de/4td_faq/download.php
https://www.barghahn-online.de/4td_faq/download/4d2b38.exe