Subject: Clearing the old messages

From: Megan K Strauss <[email-masked]>
Date: 7 Jun 1996 03:42:59 GMT

Who clears out all the OLD messages?

I have to scroll thorugh a zillion messages to get to the new 
and active ones.
 Can I push a switch and wipe off the Ancient Ones?

The one posting that I had on lasted only two days!!!!

---

From: [email-masked] (Ron Ginger)
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 08:52:35 LOCAL

In article <[email-masked]> Megan K Strauss <[email-masked]> writes:
>From: Megan K Strauss <[email-masked]>
>Subject: Clearing the old messages
>Date: 7 Jun 1996 03:42:59 GMT

>The one posting that I had on lasted only two days!!!!

Has this been added to the FAQ yet? we seem to get a question about how news 
works every couple weeks, and there have been a few very good and detailed 
replies.

The short answer, is you have control over this by the news reader program you 
use. And remember, it NEWS- like old newspapers, once you have read it you 
throw it away, so your positng didnt dissapear in 2 days, it dropped off YOUR 
list when you read it.

It dropped off every newsserver in the world whenever that server 
administrator decided it should.

Ron Ginger
my signature is http://www.ultranet.com/~ginger

---

From: [email-masked] (James Kirkpatrick)
Date: 7 Jun 96 09:34:21 MDT

In article <[email-masked]>, Megan K Strauss <[email-masked]> writes:
|>Who clears out all the OLD messages?
|>
|>I have to scroll thorugh a zillion messages to get to the new 
|>and active ones.
|> Can I push a switch and wipe off the Ancient Ones?
|>
|>The one posting that I had on lasted only two days!!!!

This is something that each server system does on their own, according
to their own rules.  For example, on my system (we have our own
server at UW), we keep articles for 3-4 days then throw them away.
Exception: an article can request longer/shorter retention via the
Expires: header, though server systems are not required to obey the
request (we do; most don't).

In your case, your service provider (net-link) probably does this,
and you should contact them for their specific policies.

And if you have a half-way decent news reader it should keep track
of which articles you've already read, and not show them to you again.
(note that many web browsers can read news, but are *terrible* compared
to a "real" news reader package).

I'd suggest you send these questions to your service provider.  If
you don't get an answer, switch providers and tell them both why.

Jim