[TIP] WHY YOUR MESSAGES DISAPPEAR IMMEDIATELY AFTER YOU POST THEM

[Jon Bell]

Almost every day, someone asks, "Help! I just posted a message and now
it's gone! Who deleted it?" Actually, it's almost certain that nobody
deleted it, and that you're seeing the normal operation of your
news-reading software.

Most newsreaders keep track of which articles you've read, and don't show
them to you again by default. This is so you don't have to wade through
the same articles over and over and over again. Some newsreaders "hide"
just-read articles immediately; others wait until the next time you
"reload" or "re-enter" the newsgroup.

Your newsreader should have a command or button or something which "shows
all" or "shows previously-read" or "unmarks" articles. This will make
those articles visible again, so you can re-read them.

All news servers *do* automatically "expire" (remove) old articles after a
certain period of time, which varies from one server to another, and which
can be anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks. This "expiration
period" can also vary from one group to another on the same server. It is
very unlikely that the expiration period is as short as one day (except
possibly for "binaries" groups which take up a lot of disk space).

Note: for beginner's information on newsgroups, check out
http://cs1.presby.edu/~jtbell/usenet/

--
Jon Bell <jtb...@presby.edu> Presbyterian College
Dept. of Physics and Computer Science Clinton, South Carolina USA