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Date:	Thu, 15 Jan 2004 08:07:48 PST8
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Persistent News Messages

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sheridan wrote:
>
> I can't delete the news I no longer want. The DELETE key
> responds with "It appears you are not the author ..."

I don't use Mozilla, but I *think* the Delete key is so the author can
remove his message from the news server so others can no longer retrieve
it. It's been a long time since I read the news RFC but iirc there's a
method for doing this. Send a Test message to a newsgroup, and then see
if *you* can delete your own message.

News is different from email. The messages aren't downloaded to your
machine; they are kept on the news server at your ISP. When you open a
newsgroup you receive just the headers so you can see the title of each
message. When you click on a message to read it, *then* it is
downloaded to your machine.

So, the messages are not taking up disk space on your machine.

If you mark a message as read (typically by highlighting it and then
using a drop-down option or maybe a right-click menu, also the simple
act of opening a message usually tags it as "read") the message will be
tagged so you won't see it again.

Eventually the messages will drop completely off your ISPs news server.
The person at your ISP who set up the server has some options such as
"delete messages when 30 days old" and "don't keep more than 1000
messages" and this is specific to each server, i.e. Earthlink might
still have a message on its news server even though Verizon deleted it
days ago. So it's not like email and you can't save a newsgroup message
"forever"; if there's something you do want to keep then you need to
Copy the message to a file somewhere (I have a directory named
\Information\ where I copy news threads plus other stuff, and I give
each thread a descriptive keyword name such as
OS2NewsgroupDownload.txt).

Each ISP's server assigns a sequential number to every message and your
news reader uses that number to retrieve the message. (The number is
*different* at different ISPs because it isn't assigned until a server
receives the message.) So, for example, your ISP might currently have
messages 20374-20481 in your comp.os.os2.setup newsgroup. When you open
that newsgroup your reader will retrieve just the headers for these 108
messages and display 108 subject lines. *If* you have flagged a message
as "already read" then your newsreader will keep track of that and skip
that header next time so you won't see the message again. You can turn
the flag on or off so you can read a message again later if you want,
but once you close the newsgroup the flags are "remembered". If you go
to your news reader's control file and delete the "already read these
messages" information for a newsgroup, and then open that newsgroup,
you'll see all the messages again (this is handy if you all of a sudden
want to read a message that you read and discarded yesterday), but if
you ever try this be sure to make a backup of the file before you do the
modification in case you get the numbers wrong.

Hope something in the above helps,

- Peter

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