For reference, you can find illustrations of Newsbin at FAQ 2 Part G
1) First, go to Setup -> Settings.
2) Next, set Max Spammer value to anywhere from 1 to 3.
If a particular post is posted to more newsgroups than the Max Spammer Value, Newsbin will ignore it.
This eliminates spam because spam is often posted to many groups simultaneously, usually meaning that it is off-topic.
If you are just starting out, set this value to about 3 until you get a better feel for how news works.
3) Set Backtrack value to anywhere from 900 to 4000.
This value determines the maximum number of messages that Newsbin will handle at a time.
The reason for this is because if Newsbin tries to process too many messages in one session, it might take a long time to download the headers (menu) for them.
So, if it takes a long time for Newsbin to download the headers, reduce this number.
Set this number high if your server is reliable and your connection is fast.
If you are just starting out, I suggest you set this to 400-800 just to get a feel for things at first.
4) Set the Mininum File Size to 8000.
This will tell Newsbin to completely ignore files smaller than 8 kilobytes.
This helps Newsbin skip small .htm files (often used in spamming).
This also helps Newsbin skip other small junk.
Later on when you get the hang of things you might want to reduce this to 6000 instead.
Newsbin Features
1) You can change the number of headers Newsbin downloads.
By default, Newsbin downloads the first 400 headers from a server (in this case, Newsbin will say "downloading 400 headers").
I prefer to tell Newsbin to download around 900-1500 headers, mainly because many binary newsgroups have a large number of posts.
Sometimes when I don't go online often, I might increase this number to 2000 or 4000 (or more), just so that the posts won't expire before I get to them.
2) You can tell Newsbin to avoid spam.
The first way to reduce spam is to set the Max Spammer option to anywhere from 1 to 3.
If for example you choose 1, this means all crossposts are ignored.
If for example you choose 3, this means all posts that are duplicated in more than 3 newsgroups are ignored.
I set the minimum filesize to 8000 bytes (about 8 kb). This gets rid of most .htm files and other annoying files that appear.
I use a decent server. Bad servers will often have lots of spam. Good servers will have very little spam.
Using Newsbin, I get less than 1% spam (out of 1000 files, only a few would be spam).
3) Newsbin allows you to download multiple files simultaneously.
Using Newsbin, you can download up to 6 files simultaneously through the "files" option.
If you're using a modem, the author of Newsbin suggests that you download 2-3 files at a time.
I usually do 1 or 2 if the server is fast, but if it's spammed or slow, I might raise it to 3 or 4.
Raising the number of threads will help you quickly skip the posts which have no useful files, but otherwise it will not significantly speed up downloads unless your connection to the server is bad in the first place.
Setting "files" to 0 will tell Newsbot to finish what it's doing and then sit on its butt. The "pause" button has the same effect as setting downloads to 0. If you see a file you don't want to download appear on one of the six download therads, click on that file and Newsbin will abort the download and delete that file from your drive.
You can find some further notes on multiple threads in part E. In summary of it, multiple threads do not normally increase efficiency to any sufficient extent. If it does, then efficiency was low to begin with.
Organizing the Server List with Newsbin
You can place a large number of news servers on the list, and the only main disadvantage is that large lists are hard to keep organized. Order matters. The servers that you place first should be reliable and preferably fast. They don't have to be good servers, since Newsbin will fill in any missing posts using other servers.
When you run Newsbin, Newsbin will cycle through each of the servers to collect posts off of each server. It keeps information on previously downloaded files (in a cache). This allows Newsbin to fill in the missing posts of one server with the posts found on another. This is sometimes necessary because many servers miss posts (for various reasons). So, it's best to put the most reliable servers on top.
Troubleshooting
1) Error: Unable to Connect.
Newsbin is rather vague when it gives you this message. It could be for many reasons. For example, the server might be too busy, it might be a "members only" server, or it might not even exist. check Part B for more possibilities.
2) Error: Unable to select group.
This means that Newsbin succeeded in connecting to the server, but that server does not carry the group that you are looking for. Be sure you spelled the group correctly.
3) DSC Cache.
If you choose Newsbin's option to "save filenames", then in every directory that you download to, you'll notice a directory called "DSC". Make sure that this directory doesn't get too many files or else it will eat up hard drive space.
These files are only meant to cache previous downloads (so that you don't download them again), but they really aren't necessary or really worth it (so feel free to delete them).
4) There is a problem with newsbin I have found, either because I misconfigured newsbin or there is a serious bug with my version (This was for version 2.03; I now use 2.14).
You see, my newsbin does not purge its cache properly. In my cache are posts from four months ago, even though my settings tell newsbin to purge the cache after 7 days.
So, I have to manually purge the cache for newsbin.
What I do is I open the cache and headers.log files and delete as many lines as I feel appropriate (I deleted over a megabyte of cache data, brining the cache down to a couple hundred kilobytes).
Now the reason I even care about reducing the cache is that when newsbin starts up, it has to load the cache, and by the time my cache file was nearly 2 megabytes, it would sometimes take a minute for newsbin to start. Now that I've eliminated a lot of the cache, it's much more reasonable. ;)
