Having a discussion in alt.comp.software.thunderbird about how a
poster's Newsgroups header could be missing the newsgroup where I read
his post. That is, the Newsgroups header shows one newsgroup (uk.tech.broadcast) that I never visited, but is missing the
a.c.s.thunderbird newsgroup that I do visit and where I saw the article.

Newsgroups: uk.tech.broadcast
^___ alt.comp.software.thunderbird
is not specified

I thought maybe the poster got his client to falsify the Newsgroups
header since the client creates that header in the message. What was
specified in the Newsgroups header within the message might not match
the GROUP and POST commands the client sent to the NNTP server.

Turns out Dialog might have a bug. I used the following command after telnetting into and authenticating to my NNTP server
(news.individual.net):

newnews alt.comp.software.thunderbird 20210425 000000

The poster had submitted that day, so I listed all new articles in the a.c.s.thunderbird newsgroup for that day. It isn't a busy newsgroup, so
there weren't that many message IDs to list. I pasted the message IDs
list into Notepad and searched on <s637el$qq2$2@dont-email.me> which is
the MID for the poster "MB". Wasn't found. Despite Dialog showing the poster's article in the a.c.s.thunderbird newsgroup on the NIN server,
the server says there is no such article in that group.

- On news.individual.net (NIN) server
- in the alt.comp.software.thunderbird newsgroup
- Dialog shows a message from MB (<s637el$qq2$2@dont-email.me>) titled
"Thunderbird - disabling display of quoted text"
- Yet the server says there is no such MID in that newsgroup

The poster, MB, submitted to the uk.tech.broadcast newsgroup, and only
to that newsgroup, but Dialog shows MB's message in a.c.s.thunderbird.
In other words, Dialog is showing an article in the wrong newsgroup.

Another user, Andy Burns, replied to MB's post in uk.tech.broadcast, but
Andy added a.c.s.thunderbird to his reply. MB posted to
uk.tech.broadcast, but Andy cross-posted his reply to both
uk.tech.broadcast and a.c.s.thunderbird. I would've expected Dialog to
show a new thread in a.c.s.thunderbird starting with Andy's post, and
MB's post would be missing in that newsgroup. Besides changing his
Newsgroups header to include both newsgroups, Andy's References header
points back to MB's MID for his message. Still, I would not expect
Dialog to yank over an article from another newsgroup to show the thread
tree starting with MB's post. In a.c.s.thunderbird, the thread
should've started with Andy's post.

At first I thought MB must have somehow gotten his client to lie to
where it submitted. His client showed 1 newsgroup in the Newsgroups
header, but his client could've issued multiple pairs of GROUP and POST commands to submit to 2 newsgroups. Nope, the NIN server that I use
said there was no MB post in the a.c.s.thunderbird newsgroup, so Dialog
was wrong to show it there.

Andy changed Newsgroups in his reply to include the original newsgroup
and to add a.c.s.thunderbird (to present MB's post to the appropriate newsgroup). Andy's reply has a References header pointing back to MB's
post in the uk.tech.broadcast newsgroup. However, neither of those
should have gotten Dialog to present MB's post as being in the a.c.s.thunderbird newsgroup.

Does Dialog have a "feature" that it completes a thread tree back to its
parent even when the article is in a different newsgroup when the parent
is on the same NNTP server?

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On Tue, 27th Apr 2021 19:11:17 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

Does Dialog have a "feature" that it completes a thread tree back to its parent even when the article is in a different newsgroup when the parent
is on the same NNTP server?

If you tell Dialog to "Reconstruct thread" (Online menu), it does so
in the current Newsgroup for the currently selected message. Dialog
traverses the References header and places all referenced messages
into the current Newsgroup. This is a deliberately programmed feature,
not a bug.

You can also retrieve messages in the "wrong" Newsgroup with Dialog by retrieving a message by Messge-ID.

Marcus thought both functions as useful and I wholeheartedly agree.

HTH.
Bernd (not: BernD, btw.)

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Bernd Rose <b.rose.tmpbox@arcor.de> wrote:

On Tue, 27th Apr 2021 19:11:17 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

Does Dialog have a "feature" that it completes a thread tree back to its
parent even when the article is in a different newsgroup when the parent
is on the same NNTP server?

If you tell Dialog to "Reconstruct thread" (Online menu), it does so
in the current Newsgroup for the currently selected message. Dialog
traverses the References header and places all referenced messages
into the current Newsgroup. This is a deliberately programmed feature,
not a bug.

You can also retrieve messages in the "wrong" Newsgroup with Dialog by retrieving a message by Messge-ID.

Marcus thought both functions as useful and I wholeheartedly agree.

HTH.
Bernd (not: BernD, btw.)

I don't recall using Reconstruct Thread for that message, but I've used
it often enough that it might've happened. Perhaps I saw the thread
starting with "Re: <subject>" and wanted to see the parent article to
show more of the past articles of the thread for whatever reason they
weren't showing up in the newsgroup that I visited. I didn't realize
Dialog would yank the article from a different newsgroup. I thought it
just got old articles from the same newsgroup.

When I was figuring the problem, I read up on the NNTP commands. One
was the 'article' command which you gave a message-ID as its argument.
You didn't need to use GROUP to select a newsgroup because the
'article <MID>' command got the article from wherever it is from the
Articles database which also means the 'article' command doesn't show
you in which newsgroup was the message. So, if Dialog is using the
References header to find the parent articles, yeah, I can see it using 'article <MID>' to rebuild a thread with articles from all over.

When I saw how the 'article <MID>' command works (to retrieve an article regardless of which newsgroup it was grouped), I can see Dialog using
the same command to reconstruct a thread, and why it ends up with the
same results as the 'article' command: articles from any newsgroup.

I was baffled on how an article in a different newsgroup ended up
showing in another newsgroup. Good thing I get my hair cut short to
just have fuzz on my head; else, I'd have fistfuls of hair around my
computer chair. Thanks for the information.

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