Missing the beginning of threads

[Steve Swift]

In this newsgroup (and not others on the mailserver I use) I find that
most threads start with a "Re:" article, referfing to something that I
never see.

I'm reasonably competent with NNTP protocol (having used it for about 20
years) which is why I mention that other groups on the same server are
not affected. I think the problem in this group is recent (about 3
months) but I suffer memory problems, so I may be wrong about that.

My news client (Thunderbird, probably irrelevant) is set to expire
articles after 93 days, which is a lower limit than the server. Thus I
never see articles which have expired off the server. This may be where
the thread opening article(s) is going.

Is it likely that I'm seeing responses to articles which have exceeded
my self-imposed 93 day limit and been expired from my client? This
doesn't seem the sort of group where articles come back to life after
more than 93 days. Is it?

I view this group every day as my "first thing in the morning cathartic
experience" so I'm not likely to have missed the original starts of the
threads, yet none of the threads with missing openings seem familiar.

 

[Steve Swift]

In this newsgroup (and not others on the mailserver I use) I find that
most threads start with a "Re:" article, referfing to something that I
never see.

Sorry, I failed to give a concrete example. The post:

"Re: Avoiding an Infinite Loop in Arbitrary eval(user_code)" by Dr J R
Stockton, 49 lines, dated 23/04/2008 20:44, is the first in the thread
that I see. What was the timestamp of the original POST in this thread?

I do have some filters in effect; maybe they are too aggressive.

 

[Rik Wasmus]

Sorry, I failed to give a concrete example. The post:

"Re: Avoiding an Infinite Loop in Arbitrary eval(user_code)" by Dr J R
Stockton, 49 lines, dated 23/04/2008 20:44, is the first in the thread
that I see. What was the timestamp of the original POST in this thread?

Which is a reply to <[email protected]>, Date: Wed,
23 Apr 2008 09:29:48 +0200, the original in that thread is from Bill Mill,
Message-ID:
<d85985b2-1811-421d-8729-e2e117d89cfc@y21g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>, Date:
Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:01:26 -0700 (PDT), so hardly expired, the References
header of both replies is OK AFAIK.

Some news servers are less reliable, you can check wether those
message-id's are actually on the server or not. (So wether the problem is
client or server).

 

[Evertjan.]

Steve Swift wrote on 24 apr 2008 in comp.lang.javascript:

In this newsgroup (and not others on the mailserver I use) I find that
most threads start with a "Re:" article, referfing to something that I
never see.

I'm reasonably competent with NNTP protocol (having used it for about 20
years)

You must be mistaken, mailservers do not "do" Usenet NNTP protocol,
It is news servers that do.

If it is only this NG, most probable the news server you use has set the
limit of retaining postings either by number or by expiring wrong,
that is wrong for your purpose.

Try another news server, or talk to the people of your one.

 

[Michael Wojcik]

Sometimes it helps to have path information to compare between
articles that you see, and others that you don't. Obviously your
server will receive articles by a somewhat different path than mine
does (unless we're using the same server). But observing where the
paths of present and missing articles diverge may be a clue,
particularly if it's in the common path prefix for your server and mine.

So:

Path to my server:

news5.newsguy.com!extra.newsguy.com!postnews.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!peer1.news.newnet.co.uk!194.159.246.34.MISMATCH!peer-uk.news.demon.net!kibo.news.demon.net!news.demon.co.uk!demon!merlyn.demon.co.uk!jrs

Which is a reply to <[email protected]>, Date:
Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:29:48 +0200

Path to my server:

news5.newsguy.com!extra.newsguy.com!news-out1.kabelfoon.nl!newsfeed.kabelfoon.nl!xindi.nntp.kabelfoon.nl!feeder.news-service.com!newsfeed.xs4all.nl!newsfeed2.news.xs4all.nl!xs4all!post.news.xs4all.nl!not-for-mail

the original in that thread is from Bill Mill, Message-ID:
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:01:26 -0700 (PDT)

Path to my server:

news5.newsguy.com!extra.newsguy.com!postnews.google.com!y21g2000hsf.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail

So it appears Steve is missing Bill Mill's post from the
googlegroups.com server, and Erwin Moller's post from xs4all.nl; but
did see J R Stockton's post, which came from demon.co.uk.

(I'm also using Thunderbird at the moment, so it's not inherently a UA
problem. Not that anyone thought it was.)

Of course, articles can and do arrive out-of-order at servers; but
Steve should still see the earlier articles eventually.