Your own rules

There is no algorithm on Unseenet deciding what you see. Your feed is newest first, a group is its threads in order, and nothing is pushed up or down because someone else wanted it. But you may want it otherwise: friends first, bots quieter, a subject you are tired of out of sight. That is what your own rules are for - the old Usenet idea of a scorefile.

You decide, and only you. Your rules run in your own client. Nobody else sees them, no node knows them, and they never change what anyone else sees. Without rules everything is as it always is.

Only these are called rules. What a group's owner writes about the group - what it is for, what it asks of you - is the group's charter: it is shown to you, and no machine applies it. The charter is what the group asks of you; your rules are what you choose to see.

Open them with Ctrl+P → Your rules in the graphical and the terminal client, or unseenet rules on the command line. The editor checks every line as you type and says what is wrong, with a suggestion where it can.

A rule is a line

Each line gives points, or does something, when a condition holds:

+30 if author in contacts            # my contacts first
-20 if from a bot                    # bots quieter
hide if subject matches "valg"       # not that again
+5 per reaction max 20               # popular, a little

• Points (+30, -20) add up to a post's score. With per … max a rule counts something - reactions, replies, days old - up to a limit.
• Actions do something: show (only posts that match are shown), hide, blur (text and pictures behind Show anyway), and in threaded groups fold, dim, highlight and mark read.
• sort by orders the feed or a group's threads: sort by score, sort by date, sort by reactions then date.
• # starts a comment, and case does not matter.

Some conditions: author in contacts, author in following, from a bot, subject matches "…", text matches "…", group is dk.*, has pictures, older than 2 days, I reacted, I posted in thread, seen, reactions >= 3, tagged linux politics (the author's or the group's tags), labelled spoiler (from labellers you follow). Combine them with and, or, not and parentheses. Ctrl+P → Your rules → Help has them all, in short.

Where a rule acts: scopes

A line like [feed] starts a scope; the rules under it act only there:

Scope	Acts on
(none)	the feed and your groups
[feed]	your timeline - the feeds you follow
[groups]	threaded groups
[dk.*]	groups whose name matches, here everything in dk.*
[foryou]	For you - and nothing else (below)

For you

For you lists replies to your posts and posts that name you, from all your groups. It is not a feed: nothing disappears from it because you have seen it - the count drops, the entry stays until you open it or it expires.

Rules for the feed or your groups never act on For you, so a post you hide in its group still reaches you when it answers you. Only rules under [foryou] do, and there is one action only for it:

[foryou]
quiet if for you is mention and from a bot   # listed, not counted, no notification
hide if author is "ed25519:…"                     # not at all
highlight if for you is reply and author in contacts

Show all

Wherever your rules act - the feed, a threaded group, For you - Show all shows that view as it is without them, plainly marked while it is on: your rules are paused here. It is a look, not a setting: nothing is saved, and it ends when you leave the view.

Why is this here?

Every post's ⋯ menu has Why?: which of your rules gave it its score, hid it, folded or blurred it. From the same menu you can watch or ignore a thread; your rules see that as thread in watched and thread in ignored, so you decide what it means - for example +50 if thread in watched or hide if thread in ignored.

Ready to copy

# Friends first, bots quieter
+30 if author in contacts
+20 if author in following
-15 if from a bot

# I have seen it: further down
-10 if older than 2 days and not I reacted

# Not that subject, in Danish groups
[dk.*]
hide if subject matches "valg" or tagged valg

# Long side discussions, folded
[groups]
fold if replies > 30 and not I posted in thread

# Spoilers and gore: never by surprise
blur if tagged spoiler or labelled spoiler
hide if labelled gore

# For you: bots that name me are quiet
[foryou]
quiet if from a bot

On the command line: unseenet rules show, set, check, on, off, clear; unseenet thread watch|ignore|clear; unseenet timeline --why; unseenet foryou --all --why.

The full language is UN-RFC 0051; this page is the friendly version.