[REQ] Disable servers for article downloads

[butterball]

Hi Alex.
I would really love to see the option to disable certain servers for article downloads or maybe set article tasks on a per server basis.
The reason for this is I use Easynews as a header server and Newsfeeds Premium Plus for articles and don´t want to grab anything except headers from Easynews unless I REALLY need/want to use it for articles. Right now I download headers and disable the Easynews server but this is not really the best solution as it doesn´t allow automation of any kind. I tried it with (strict) priorities but if I let it run for a couple of hours and a couple of thousand articles it WILL get some from Easynews, no matter what.

[alex]

if you use strict for higher-priority servers newspro will download from easynews only if all else failed, there is no almost other way (see below).

try to exclude header bandwidth and check how much newspro downloads from easynews, maybe the volume is not so significant to worry about.

you can also to arrange the queue by date and if you use automation to get headers with larger intervals to increase the probability the articles propagated to newsfeeds.

there is one exception to the rule above, if there is a spam post attacking another post - newspro may download from a lower-priority server if the most likely genuine part can be found only there, you can see it easily by disabling autosupport for partial messages and checking properties for duplicate parts, it reduces the risk to download corrupted attachments. along with the console which indicates mishaps it provides gives full info about why newspro downloaded from a given server, just the case came up recently and even puzzled me at first.

[butterball]

Well, that´s exactly how I´m doing it now. And thr first thing I did this morning was download the new version to be able to exclude header bandwidth. And yes, it probably isn´t THAT much. But I would really like to be able to just exclude article downloads per server. It´s just a wish, though . So if nobody else (and especially you) thinks it´s a good idea...well, I can surely live with how it is handled now...

[edfreeman]

If you're downloading binaries and expect Newsfeeds to be as complete as Easynews, well . . . . that's just too much to ask. Not that Newsfeeds was all that bad once you added up all the servers for completion, but they're still a few articles shy of the premium services. Bottom line is I think you'll always have to get a few from your premium service if you want complete files. I know I get less than a Gig out of around 30 a month from my premium service with NF set to a higher priority and strict (ie - the other 29 come from NF).

[MrBuckeye]

I usually want to download from my ISP's news server. However, they keep logs.

If I'm not sure that a "classical mp3" is legal, I don't want to download it from my ISP. Instead, I get it from newsfeeds.com because they don't keep logs.

[Guest]

I would like to see this option added as well. Sometimes I forget to disable the premium server. And since new headers always propagate to the premium server first, I end up downloading articles from the premium server even though they would have been available on a free server within 30 minutes or so. I usually end up renewing my premium server account one week early each month due to accidental article downloads. It would also be helpful if server retention could be specified in hours rather than days so that I could set the premium server retention 1 hour behind the free servers.

[MikeStammer]

How is newsfeeds NOT considered a premium provider? They have been the best I have used so far (for what I do anyways). Sometimes i run into the 750 MB a day cap on some servers, but just continue on the next day. I have tried about 6 others and newsfeeds has been the best so far (Easynews was not one of the others I have tried).

[Tha*Lunat!k]

I use Newsfeeds and Easynews, but Newsfeeds has always been my primary (for about 4 years now). They have their problems and all aspects aren't always perfect, but they get the job done. I wouldn't consider myself a "heavy downloader" but I like knowing that I need not continually check up on my limits. I see people complain in newsgroups about stuff like "Stop renaming files, I downloaded the entire thing and found that I already have it." If I do something like that I just delete it and move on, no big worries when I've got Newsfeeds around.