(Glenna Rose) writes:

[About missing References: header in follow-ups.]

I'm using First Class, Version 5.611.

Ah, all is becoming clear.

FirstClass http://www.firstclass.com/ is a groupware-type package
that includes a gateway to Usenet. There's a newsgroup for it at
alt.bbs.first-class, and there were lengthy discussions there about
this problem up through 1994. That tells me that either the problem
was fixed in 1995, or no-one uses First Class anymore. :-)

The current version of FC is 7.1, so your provider is two major
versions behind. I'm guessing that upgrading to 7.1 would fix the
problem, but it may also be expensive.

Occasionally, I post through a web page rather than First Class and
the problem doesn't happen.

Yes, when you post through a web-based newsreader (like Google
Groups), the server at the other end does the posting, and your web
browser just sends the text that you type in. So it completely avoids
the broken FC Usenet gateway.

Often, I've not contributed to threads because I know my responses
will be disconnected. I even went for a period of time that I
didn't contribute at all because of it. I do try to be considerate,
and this bothers some people greatly. However, it just isn't
practical to cut myself off completely because of it; that would be
like not taking part in a conversation because of being soft-voiced
and needing to repeat things for some people.

Hey now, we're talking about your problems here, not mine. :-)

I'm thinking what I'd like to do is post through the same program
from a different computer and see if it happens there. However, to
do that, I need help from some people here who see my responses as
being disconnected. I'm totally up for having an experimental thread
going, perhaps named: OT-posting probelms or something similar so
most people don't even bother to read it.

Sure; I'll be able to tell.

You mentioned the (2) being added; I see this when I respond. Do
you think if I simply deleted it that all would be okay?

That might help, because then at least the subjects would match, and
some newsreaders would lump your post in with others with the same
subject. That wouldn't get it properly threaded, but it could keep it
from starting a new thread.

If I only click "Reply" then none of the original message stays.
So, when I respond, I first "Select All" from the original message
and then click "Reply." I don't see that "Select All" would affect
the subject line or the threading features, perhaps it does.

That shouldn't make any difference, as far as I can imagine.

I'm certainly willing to try whatever can be done to the program to
correct the problem. If anyone is familiar with First Class and can
offer a solution, that would be most appreciated (by many of us!).
Perhaps if there is a way to display the reference header in my
messages (either incoming or outgoing), it could be corrected there.

I'm going to cross-post this to alt.bbs.first-class. That seems like
the most likely source of people who actually know what they're
talking about.

If I were certain another version of First Class would correct this,
I'd most likely buy it. I use First Class because that is what the
provider through which I read the newsgroup uses, and there is much
more involved than newsgroup with the services (not quite like AOL
but different than most). It took a while to get used to it (old
dogs, new tricks kind of thing) but now that I'm used to it, I
really like it as there are many great features with it in other
areas.

I doubt you could do that anyway. The client that you use on your
computer talks to a server program on your ISP's end, and generally
those things need to match up in version pretty closely to work. You
could download the 7.1 client from firstclass.com, but it almost
certainly wouldn't work with your ISP's 5.6xx system.

However, I see now that they do have a 5.623 download available, which
might be fine for upgrading from your 5.611. I'd check with your ISP
first before trying that, though, just to be sure.


--
Aaron