writes:

Let me say up front that none of the following should be interpreted
as a criticism of you personally. Your posts are always well-written
and interesting, and that's what's most important. In almost ten
years of regular Usenet usage, I've never seen this particular problem
before, so I'm curious about it, not offended. If you'll tell us the
name and version number of your newsreader, I'd be glad to help if I
can.

Thank you, Aaron.

I'm using First Class, Version 5.611.


What's happening is that somewhere along the line your posts are
losing the References header. The References header looks something
like this:

References: fc.003d0941018f677f3b9aca00be29f75f.18f67e5@pmug. org

It contains one or more values, which correspond to the Message-IDs of
its parent posts in the thread. Newsreaders use that info to build
the tree structure of a thread. If a post has no References header,
most newsreaders will assume it's a new thread.

While my email program has the option to display all of that, First Class
doesn't. I've gone into every place I can find to make changes and there
are none that make reference to either displays or reference lines.


Some newsreaders may seem to thread your posts correctly, but that's
not quite what's happening. What they're doing is seeing an
'orphaned' post -- one that looks like a reply because the Subject
starts with "", but it has no References header -- and sorting it
into the same thread with other posts with the same subject line. But
whether or not your post shows up in contextual order is left up to
chance.

If you do Google searches a lot, you'll see this when a thread has a
very common Subject line like "Help". When showing a thread view,
Google will tend to slap a whole bunch of orphaned posts and
sub-threads together, despite the fact that they have nothing in
common other than having the same subject line and being in the same
newsgroup.

Yes, I have seen that and wondered why they were grouped together when I
knew they were not the same thread; it happens often in a local social
newsgroup. We have get-togethers that often have names like "Movie night"
and several years will be in the same "thread" though they are not
related. Thank you for the explanation.


Your administrator should be able to track this problem down pretty
easily, perhaps with a tool like tcpdump, which will track all the
low-level traffic on a connection. By watching the incoming data as
you send a post and the outgoing data when his server passes it
upstream, he can tell when the References header is being lost and
when the (2) is being added to the Subject line.

He has tried to track it and it is a puzzlement to him as well.
Occasionally, I post through a web page rather than First Class and the
problem doesn't happen. 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.

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.

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?

This message is a reply to the one you sent to me, which before I changed
the subject line, showed the previous subject line on the title bar with
an additional (2) added to it. However, when I closed the message and
opened it again, the title bar showed the new subject line. We already
know that it will begin a new thread for most others, but it will be
interesting to see if it displays on my reader as part of the previous
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.

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.

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.

Computers can be really great, but they can also be rather annoying, like
birds singing. When they are singing during the day, they are great, but
at 5:30 on a Sunday morning right outside your bedroom window, they often
sound more like squawking than singing.g

Aaron, if you, or anyone else with possible reader solutions, would like
to correspond about this privately and me just send periodic test messages
in trying to reach a solution, I'm certainly very receptive to that.

If you'd like to send a message with the subject line: "OT-Test" I'll
respond to it two different ways, one without selecting all before I reply
and the other with simply deleting the (2) in the subject line. If one of
them stay threaded, then at least we'll have a solution. After we do
this, I'll forward your information above to our admin and see if he can
figure it out from that. I want it resolved as much (or more) than anyone
else. If I wanted to be annoying, I'd drag my fingers across the
blackboard or grit my teeth.g

Thank you for your suggestions and information.

Glenna

(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

Aaron Baugher writes:

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

An outstandingly helpful response, Aaron. Could I suggest to Glenna
Rose that she consider heading off flames by adding an apology in her
sig to the effect that her article "may be unthreaded due to ...."
since she is aware of a shortcoming in her newsreader?

Also very sorry to hear of your family tragedy, Glenna.
--
John Savage (newsgroup email invalid; keep news replies in newsgroup)