Why is NoCeM "spamming" AltaVista/DejaNews...

People who use AltaVista or Dejanews to read a particular newsgroup have been complaining that all they get is NoCeM notices. It is a fundamental part of the NoCeM algorithm for the notice contain a list of the newsgroups that were spammed -- this list is what the search is finding. Understandably it's as annoying as spam to users who read news this way.

Here are a few workarounds to help resolve the problem -- if these don't work for you, or you have another suggestion, please email me at moose@cm.org.

Assuming you are looking for articles in alt.books.technical:

• AltaVista
  1. You can tell AltaVista you only want posts within a given newsgroup by using the "newsgroups:" qualifier. (ie: newsgroups:alt.books.technical). (Click for a demonstration.)

  2. You can tell AltaVista to specifically hide NoCeM notices using an Advanced Query. The Advanced search string "alt.books.technical and not @@BEGIN NCM BODY" will hide all NoCeM notices that follow the published standard.

• Dejanews
  1. You can set up a filter to tell Dejanews that you want all posts to a newsgroup, instead of all posts that mention the newsgroup.

  2. If you do a Power Search and choose: Sort by: Newsgroup it will group all of the NoCeM notices together, possibly making it easier to avoid.