news.software.readers

ms wrote in
news:6233fbF217598U1@:

> In a windows ng, my occasional threads were getting stupid replies
> by a poster. I finally called him on it.
>
> In a later thread, he replied, but the next day, his post was
> gone.
>
> Recently, I posted a new thread, among the replies, someone
> responded to his reply in my thread. But I can't see the idiot's
> post in my thread. I don't use a filter, just the Xnews defaults.
>
> Two questions:
> Isn't it unusual that a ISP allows a poster to delete his post? I
> can't do it in .
>
> How can a poster respond in a tread, be visible to others, but not
> to me, when I'm not using a filter?

There are several possibilities, you have not provided enough
information to narrow it down.

First - Once you read an article in Xnews, it is marked as "Read" and
you will not see it (and all its crossposts) again after closing the
newsgroup unless you have the "Load Read Articles" box checked in the
Misc Tab under Setup, or in the group window you reset the group by
doing a "Clear Read and Keep" (Ctrl-F9), or if you open the group
"Special" (Ctrl-Enter) and appropriately adjust the settings.

Second - Once a post is generated, it gets distributed to all the other
thousands of servers out there. Depending on the quality of your
newsserver, a specific post may arrive at a time when the server is
"swamped" and the post may be dropped and you may never see it. Many
ISPs that host their own newsserver have this problem. A good
indication of this problem is to look at the completion percentages in
the binary groups.

Third - It is possible that the poster is cancelling his posts or a
masquerader is cancelling them for him. A cancellation post is
distributed around to the thousands of servers just like a normal post.
Some servers will honor the cancel and some servers won't. [The
potential does open the door for abuse.] It's possible that your
newsserver honors those cancels while another poster's newsserver
doesn't.

I leave it to you to pick which one applies.

HTH,
John