Netnews Filtering Server
Department of Computer Science
Stanford University
Comments to: [log in to unmask]
February 1994
( A ) I N T R O D U C T I O N
The Database Group at Stanford is providing a filtering service for NetNews
articles. A user sends his profiles to the service, and will receive news
articles relevant to his interests periodically. Communication to and from
the service is via e-mail messages.
A user's profile is, in the style of WAIS [1] queries, just a plain piece of
English text; e.g., "object oriented programming," or "nba golden state
warriors basketball." Based on the statistical distributions of the words in
the articles, scores are given to evaluate how relevant they are to a
profile. The highest possible score given to an article document is 100. The
user can specify the minimum score for an article to be delivered.
Below we first look at a sample message from the user and a sample notifica-
tion from the service. Then we describe details of the user message format.
( B ) E X A M P L E
A user who has sent this message to the service
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From [log in to unmask] Fri Feb 19 21:48:24 1993
To: [log in to unmask]
subscribe object oriented programming
period 3
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will receive periodically (every 3 days, as specified) notifications such as
this one:
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From [log in to unmask] Mon Feb 22 10:40:35 1993
To: [log in to unmask]
Subscription 1: object oriented programming
Article: comp.object.10836
From: [log in to unmask] (Eric Jul.)
Subject: I-WOOOS'93 Call for Papers/Participation
Score: 83
First 15 lines:
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
1993 INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON
OBJECT-ORIENTATION IN OPERATING SYSTEMS
I-WOOOS '93
The Grove Park Inn and Country Club
Ashville, North Carolina, U.S.A.
December 9-10th, 1993
Sponsored by
The IEEE Technical Committee on Operating Systems
and Application Environments (TCOS) (pending)
....
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The user can then request the whole article sent to him if he thinks it is
relevant.
( C ) U S E R M E S S A G E F O R M A T
User messages should be sent to [log in to unmask] The subject field of
the message is ignored. Each message is a request to the service. Each
request consists of a number of commands. Each command must start with a new
line with no leading spaces. Continuation lines begin with a space or a tab.
All commands are case-insensitive.
Requests are associated with the return address of the user message. Service
replies and deliveries will be sent to that address.
The usages of the commands are as follows.
( C . 1 ) S u b s c r i b i n g
To subscribe for articles, use these commands:
SUBSCRIBE word word ... Subscribe for articles relevant to the profile
specified by <word>'s. Maybe followed by
PERIOD, EXPIRE, and THRESHOLD commands.
PERIOD period (Optional - default 1 days) Specify <period>
as the period between notifications (in days).
EXPIRE days (Optional - default 9999 days) Specify
<days> as the length (in days) for which
the subscription is valid.
THRESHOLD score (Optional - default 60) Specify <score> as the
minimum score for an article to be relevant.
The most relevant article is given a score of
100. <score> must an integer between 1 to 100.
For example, to subscribe for articles related to "information filtering,"
valid for 200 days, send this:
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% mail [log in to unmask]
Subject:
subscribe information filtering
expire 200
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The service will acknowledge your subscription, returning a subscription
identifier (sid).
( C . 2 ) G e t t i n g A r t i c l e s
After receiving notifications of articles that may be relevant to your
interests, you may decide to see an article in its entirety. You can get the
whole article with the GET command:
GET article article ... Get the articles specified (by their article
ids).
For example,
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% mail [log in to unmask]
Subject:
get news.announce.conferences.3670
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( C . 3 ) R e l e v a n c e F e e d b a c k
After reading the articles, you may find some that you like. You can provide
feedback using these commands:
FEEDBACK sid Provide feedback to subscription <sid>.
LIKE article article ... Specify relevant article(s) by their ids.
For example, this message says that article news.announce.conferences.3670 is
relevant to subscription 1:
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% mail [log in to unmask]
Subject:
feedback 1
like news.announce.conferences.3670
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With feedback information, the service may be able to better match future
articles against your subscriptions.
( C . 4 ) M a n a g i n g S u b s c r i p t i o n s
You can manage your subscriptions with these commands:
UPDATE sid Update subscription with id <sid>. Must be
followed by one or more of PERIOD, EXPIRE,
THRESHOLD (see C.1.), or PROFILE commands to
specify the parameter(s) to be updated.
PROFILE word word ... Specify the new profile for the UPDATE command.
CANCEL sid Cancel subscription <sid>.
LIST List all your subscriptions.
For example, to update the period and the threshold of a subscription:
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% mail [log in to unmask]
Subject:
update 3
period 1
threshold 60
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( C . 5 ) S e a r c h F o r P a s t A r t i c l e s
Besides providing the subscription service, the service also allows you to
search for recent articles that are already in the database:
SEARCH word word ... Do a search of the database with the given
query. Maybe optionally followed by a THRESHOLD
command to specify the minimum score for an
article to be retrieved.
For example, to search for articles related to "information filtering":
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% mail [log in to unmask]
Subject:
search information filtering
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( C . 6 ) O t h e r C o m m a n d s
END End the request message. Useful for
preventing the processing of signatures.
HELP Get help information on server.
( D ) R E F E R E N C E S
[1] B. Kahle, et al., "An Information System for Corporate Users: Wide Area
Information Servers," ONLINE, Vol. 15, No. 5, p. 56-60, September 1991.
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