David Richerby wrote:

Guy Macon wrote:

To cut down on the noise, filter out anything that is crossposted
to rec.games.chess.politics, rec.games.chess.misc, alt.chess or
rec.games.chess. Those are unlikely to be about computer chess.

I wouldn't recommend filtering against rec.games.chess.misc -- there's a
reasonable chance that something cross-posted to only this group and
rgc.misc is about computer chess.

Good point. Sometimes I forget that the newbies haven't been taught
the "rules" (conventions) that were designed to make Usenet work.
One of these conventions is that .misc newsgroups are for topics
that don't fit in the other newsgroups.

However, rec.games.chess is a dead giveaway of junk postings
because the thread was started by somebody who was trying to
hit as many groups as possible.

Another good point. Perhaps filtering out anything crossposted
to more than 2 or 3 groups would be a better idea.

alt.chess seems to be an indicator that the thread was started
by Sam Sloan -- I've not noticed anyone else cross-posting
there except through contributing to threads started by Sam.

That's the sad part. One net-abuser starts flooding
rec.games.chess.computer with posts that aren't about computer
chess, and the newbies all line up like sheep and reply to the
same list of crossposted newsgroups. I think that it's done on
purpose by Sam Sloan; a working rec.games.chess.politics that is
full of on-topic posts about the politics of chess (FIDE, USCF,
etc,) is a threat to his aspirations to be elected one day. So
he floods rec.games.chess.politics with off-topic crossposts and
thus makes it ineffective as a place to discuss his shortcomings
as a candidate. Making rec.games.chess.computer ineffective as
a place to discuss computer chess is just a side effect.