I think it would be convenient if I could specify versions to ignore directly in pom.xml under the configuration tag. Then I would not have the need to create an extra Rules.xml file, but could simply specify everything directly in the pom:

<ignoreVersions>
    <ignoreVersion type="regex">.*-beta.</ignoreVersion>
    <ignoreVersion type="regex">.*_ALPHA</ignoreVersion>
</ignoreVersions>