From Newsgroup: comp.misc


whitelisting incoming phone calls is popular and commonplace, because it permits only preapproved caller id numbers to ring through to your phone, thus allowing caller id alerts to appear without ringing the phone, just
in case the call could be important enough to check voicemail afterwards, since callers with legitimate purpose for calling will either call right
back with the same caller id, or leave a message stating the reasons for their call with a callback number... this is normal for most phone users

whitelisting incoming usenet articles works in a similar way by allowing
only preapproved text strings in overview and non-overview header fields
to be promoted, marked, downloaded, watched, etc., thus avoiding "ignore" flags that are automatically set against all unapproved article overview headers (and non-overview headers in downloaded articles can be filtered comprehensively) while cross-posters, troll farm sock puppets, etc. have already been flagged and automatically filtered out to the "junk" folder, and yet still, no matter what newsgroups you may be subscribed to, every
new article that was not posted by whitelisted contributors (ditto self), "ignore" flags keep piling up, often in threads, defacto 100% troll farm botnet filler (mostly ai-generated obfuscation), so even though you have already blocked (auto-ignored/auto-moved/auto-deleted) many dozens, even hundreds of troll farm sock puppets, their ever-morphing overview header aliases have not stopped flooding usenet 24/7/365 ever since circa ~1994
(over 32 years of occupation under psyops operation "eternal september")

thus using the "auto-ignore" flag on unknown, unapproved usenet articles
serves to remind the usenet world that peered nntp newsservers are still working mostly very reliably, after forty-five long and productive years,
and agency operatives are still only doing their duty, a win win for all

--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2