Where do you access this newsgroup?

[ToolMiser]

I have come to the conclusion that I am missing a bunch of your fine postings. The number (AOL says I have and the actual) differ, and I've contacted their support a couple of times, but it still doesn't ad up. It is time to access it through a different provider, who is your favorite.

Thanks! I hope the replies appear so I can read them.

[Rob Gray]

You can access most or all newsgroups directly via Google.com.

Rob

[Gerald Ross]

The same happens with me, but it is because my filter gets rid of a lot of the junk before it is downloaded to my newsreader. Does AOL filter newsgroups?

[Silvan]

This is my favorite:

that they have some rules you have to obey. No big deal to most people, but they do enforce them. The big one many find objectionable is the need to post with a non-munged reply address. It's a good feed, and it's free unless you're a German taxpayer.

[mac davis]

I just switched to Giganews... not by choice, because comcast switched to it..

I get all the NG's that I did with whatever they were using before, but with an amazing retention rate... I haven't seen a "no longer available" post since I started with Giganews..

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

[Charlie Self]

Nope. Or not so's you'd notice. They do provide filtering for the contents, but I find the same thing happens to my reading as ToolMiser finds. The start of many, maybe most, threads never appears. My own posts seldom appear.

There's something weird at AOL, though I'm not sure it's the same as Shakespeare's "something rotten in Denmark."

Charlie Self "One of the common denominators I have found is that expectations rise above that which is expected." George W. Bush

[DamnYankee]

News.Individual.NET

I've been using this for about 6 months after getting very frustrated with Google. Post appear within 15 - 20 seconds.

Bryan

[MSCHAEF.COM]

I have a Unix shell account via PrismNet (bought by iocom) in Austin, Texas. It's a text-based newsreader, but it works pretty well.

-Mike

[Andy Dingley]

Get an internet connection, not AOL

[makesawdust]

I use

It's pretty easy to use

-- makesawdust

[Dave Hinz]

Or, from any newsreader client you want on your system, with the free newsserver at news.individual.net - they have excellent article retention times (months), very reliable, free, and fast. Just because you may connect with AOL or some other ISP doesn't limit you to using their newsserver.

Dave Hinz

[Dave Hinz]

That's not particularly helpful, and they _can_ use whatever they want once the connection is negotiated with AOL.

[Andy Dingley]

So don't use AOL then.

No, AOL's proxy servers still screw up all sorts of things.

[Dave Hinz]

I don't. Never had. Never will.

Only if you _use_ their proxy servers.

[Michael Stanford]

In Outlook Express there is a button in the Tools menu that lets you download the next 300 headers. Is there anything similar in AO(Hel)L?

Mick

[John McCoy]

[e-mail] (ToolMiser) wrote in news: [e-mail]:

For a quick check, you can look in Google Groups...comparing what's present there with what AOL shows will let you know if you're really missing anything (for various reasons the numbers shown by readers and servers can get out of whack, so you may not be missing anything). If there are missing articles, you can probably get the message IDs from Google, and ask AOL support where they went (message IDs are unique for each article). Note that the "new" version of Google Groups is a disaster & all but useless, so you might want to try google.ca or google.co.uk to access Google Groups.

If you do want to move on to a different server, you've basically got two choices: if all you want is rec.ww, or rec.ww and some other text groups, go with news.individual.net. It's free, it's about the best run server on Usenet, there's no reason to go anywhere else. If, on the otherhand, you also want binary groups (either to get a.b.p.w or to get pr0n), you pretty much have to pay. The best of the pay services is Supernews (they take a strict line on trolls, spam, etc). Newsguy, Giganews, EasyNews, and UsenetServer also get more-or-less good reviews.

John

[Larry Blanchard]

I'll second that suggestion. I've been using them for at least 2-3 years now - before they became n.i.n.

And the few times they've ben down for maintenance, they've announced it on alt.free.newsservers and went down and came back up on the schedule they'd specified. Great news source.