trouble posting tothis group

  • Thread starter Thread starter Clif McIrvin
  • Start date Start date
C

Clif McIrvin

I've been posting successfully to ms.public.access, but my posts here
are not getting though.

This is a test post after unsubscribing / resubscribing to see if it
gets through.
 
Thanks for responding. It's curions that this message went through, but
my question isn't.

I'm not used to having trouble posting via NNTP using Outlook Express.

Clif
 
Clif McIrvin said:
I'm not used to having trouble posting via NNTP using
Outlook Express.
Click to expand...

I have uncovered two instances wherein the MSnews server seems to remove
articles that contain certain text (anywhere in the ASCII form of the
message, not just the body).

Removal is usually almost instantaneous; but sometimes an article persists
for several minutes. This is why we sometimes see "deleted from server"
messages in OE.

As I recall, one instance is if the message contains the substring "X Y Z"
without the interstitial spaces. Of course "X Y Z" is a common example
name.

Another instance is if the message contains the substring "o n o" without
the interstitial spaces. Tony Valko (Biff) encountered this when he used
the word astro n omical".

It is better to use microsoft.public.test.here for test posts. Yes, some
problems could be newsgroup-specific. But that is very rare, if ever.

(Some NG have different expiration criteria.)


----- original message -----
 
Very helpful information ... I was suspecitng deletion based on contents
.... but so far have not ciphered out what the offending text might be.

As I have attempted sending as a new post, as pasting into a reply to
this thread, and actually re-typing the entire message on the
possibility that some offensive non-printable sequence had become
embedded and all have failed, I will follow your other suggestion and
see what happens in the test group.

I did post here instead of the test group on purpose, knowing that,
strictly speaking, I was out of protocol.

Thanks for your kind reply.

Clif
 
Clif McIrvin said:
As I have attempted sending as a new post, as pasting into a
reply to this thread, and actually re-typing the entire message
on the possibility that some offensive non-printable sequence
had become embedded and all have failed, I will follow your
other suggestion and see what happens in the test group.
Click to expand...

If you are saying you are still unable to post your intended message, and it
does not contain any of the known "offensive" text (hogwash!), feel free to
send the intended posting to me, and I will isolate the "offensive" content
or other root cause of the problem. I monitor the TCP/NNTP protocol, so I
know exactly what is going on.

Ideally, use Forward As Attachment (right click) to attach the failed
posting from your Sent Items folder. Send it to joeu2004 "at" hotmail.com.


----- original message -----
 
Joe user,

This is an interesting thread, can you keep your response to the email in
the group so we can all see it.
--
Mike

When competing hypotheses are otherwise equal, adopt the hypothesis that
introduces the fewest assumptions while still sufficiently answering the
question.
 
Mike H -- yours is an encouraging post ... it's nice to know others are
watching.

I was able to succesfully post my original message to ms.public.test
*after* I went through and put a space between every letter --- with VBA
that wasn't a big deal, and it was easier (for me) than trying to guess
what the offending text was/is.

I figure to sit back a day or two and see what Joe User comes up with.

Clif
 
I said:
I will isolate the "offensive" content
Click to expand...

Well, we have a new "offensive" string to avoid: "c a s i o" without
interstitial spaces.

Clif made the mistake of using the word "occa sionally" (without the
interstitial space). Serves him right, really! He shoulda just wrote
"sometimes". :-) :-) :-)

Seriously, someone needs to inform MS that their spam filter (I ass-u-me) is
bad. Bad for business, since MS directs users to rely on the MS "discussion
groups" for tech support.

FYI, I want to reiterate that the removal of articles can happen minutes
later. Even I got fooled initially when my first test with Clif failed
posting succeeded. "Succeeded" meant: the header appeared in OE. But try
opening the message (a separate NNTP request) some time later, and that's
when we might get the "deleted from server" message. I didn't! Oh yeah:
wait some time longer (5 min, in one case), reset the NG OE (i.e. flush
headers and bodies), then read headers again, and voila! The message is no
longer there.

Usually, it seems that the article was never posted at all because we do not
even see the header in OE. But careful monitoring of the NNTP protocol
reveals that the article is accepted by the server and even assigned a
number, which is my definition of "posted". The removal simply happens very
soon thereafter, often within seconds.

But the MSnews server seems unusually busy today, so the removal delay is
quite long. This can lead to the seemingly "inexplicable" situation where
articles posted to the MSnews server appear on other NG servers (Google
Groups, MSDG, etc), but not on the MSnews server itself. Those remote sites
are simply lucky(?) to poll and pull from the MSnews server before the
article is removed.

Geesh! I just found myself scanning this text for the offensive strings
before pushing the send button. This is ridiculous!


----- original message -----
 
What?! Eurditeness is an issue???

Seriously, THANK YOU for the help, Joe User.

I passed this thread along to an MVP I'm acquainted with.

Clif
 
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