From: eugene@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
Subject: [l/m 8/24/92] How to cancel news articles
Followup-To: poster
Organization: NAS Program, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 92 11:01:09 GMT
Reply-To: eugene@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)

Panel 28

	Table of Contents of this Chain

28	Canceling posted news articles				<This panel>
1	Reminders on use of the *.general news.groups
7	General Help Reading News
14	Posting headers and cross-posting
15	Distribution Fields
21	Killfiles (with extreme prejudice)

How to take back what you say..... [also a short survey of news systems]

This is a short tutorial on how to cancel an article:

Why?  Uses of cancel benefit poster and reader.  The best uses of the cancel
comman include: cancelling test messages.  Cancel ads to sale/wanted/newprod
groups.  You stop getting queries, and readers are spared looking.

Most every news reader requires that you find the article and start
reading it before you may cancel it.  Once you have found the article,
please skip to the section regarding your news reader.  In general,
the 'cancel this article' command should be bound to the 'c' or 'C'
keys.

Conventions:
	...	signifies insignificant text

NN:
	As you're reading your article, press the C key at the prompt.
NN will then ask you to "Confirm cancel", just type the letter y.  It
will then say "Cancelling article <article-id> ..." and then go on to
the next selected article as if you had just finished reading that
article and had hit the n key to go to the next article.

RN:
	At the article prompt, press the C key.  RN will then cancel
the article for you and will re-display the article prompt.

READNEWS:
	At the "More? [...]" prompt, type the lowercase letter c and
then press the return key.  The article will then be cancelled and
readnews will go on to show you the next article.

VNEWS:
	At the "more?" prompt, type the c key.  VNEWS will then ask
you to confirm by saying "cancel [n]?" at which point you press the y
key.  VNEWS will then go on to display the next article.

VN:
        From within the article you would like to cancel, press 'f' to
followup.  At the top of the article, duplicate the "References"
line.  Change "References" to "Control".  Then, put the word
"cancel " before the message ID.  Finally, post your followup.

NOTES:  
       Press the D key.  Notes will respond with "Delete?".  Type y.
Notes sends out articles in batches.  If an article has already been
transfered to the network the article will not be deleted.  Notes
will not respond to a cancel message.  It will only delete articles
created locally.

ANU-NEWS:
	While reading an article, enter the "CANCEL" command at the
NEWS> prompt.

VM:
	For VM, users using netnews (directly from disk, not via NNTP),
	must positioning the cursor on the article and type cancel.
	The NNR VM NNTP client doesn't have cancel possibilities.

TIN:
	After bringing up the message you would like to cancel, type
	a capital C.  In tin PL5, you will be asked to confirm this by
	hitting a lower-case c.  Other news readers I'm not sure about
	but it's probably a similar mechanism.

XRN: ????

TAS: ????

GNUS:
	In Subject Mode:
`C'
     Cancel the current article you posted
     (`gnus-Subject-cancel-article').

  Suppose you post an article and then later realize that you made a
horrible mistake.  You really do not want anyone to see your article.
You want the article to be removed from any machines that it may have
reached.  The command `C' (`gnus-Subject-cancel-article') is intended to
do this.  First select the offending article as current, then type `C'.

Warning: Cancels are not 100% effective--they do not traverse
news-to-mail gateways (or news-to-anything else gateways).
Remember that there are propagation delays--a lot of sites
receive news in daily batches and your mistaken posting may
stick around for a long time before its cancel catches up
with it--cancels ARE news articles--they are EXPENSIVE just
like news articles (remember that warning about Are you sure
you want to spend thousands of dollars of other people's
money?), and can get lost in transit just like other news
articles.  (Also, some sites simply do not honor cancels!)

The best time to retract a posting is BEFORE you send it. --ENM

From yogi@cs.ubc.ca  Fri Aug 14 08:12:22 1992
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	id AA15077; Fri, 14 Aug 92 08:12:22 -0700
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Date: 14 Aug 92  8:12 -0700
From: Yossi Gil <yogi@cs.ubc.ca>
To: <eugene@nas.nasa.gov>
Cc: <murphy@cs.kun.nl>
Message-Id: <3849*yogi@cs.ubc.ca>
Subject: Re: Canceling before I forget
Status: R

> Been busy.
> 
> VMS: VNEWS is the VMS system.
> 
> 
> Local cancel only: Most news systems work only on a local host. *rn and
> other rn based systems allow used of remote (rrn) systems, initially,
> these failed to cancel remotely posted articles.
> 
> 
> I am against ego posts.  Compgraphics is a good example of the problems
> of ego post, that's why I wat to remove the references section.
> 

Latest edition of the cancel tutorial:

How to take back what you say?
------------------------------
	The best time to retract a posting is BEFORE you send it. --ENM

Suppose you post an article and then later realize that you made a
horrible mistake.  You really do not want anyone to see your article.
You want the article to be removed from any machines that it may
have reached. What you should do is cancel your article. This may not
remedy your mistake completely, but it will surely help.  In virtually
all cases sending another message saying "Please ignore my previous
article", will make things even worse.

MISPOSTED ARTICLE: If you have violated a newsgroup charter, please
consider this as a horrible mistake that should be cancelled without
any delay. Mispostings are a real nuisance to all readers, and they
have an annoying tendency to sprout long threads which clutter some
newsgroups completely.  By cancelling your non conforming article
_early_ you will contribute to a better usenet environment. Besides,
you may be able to avoid the flames and personal mailbox flooding which
may occur after such a mistake. Your cooperation will be appreciated!

WARNING: Cancels are not 100% effective--they do not traverse
news-to-mail gateways (or news-to-anything else gateways).  Remember
that there are propagation delays--a lot of sites receive news in daily
batches and your mistaken posting may stick around for a long time
before its cancel catches up with it--cancels ARE news articles--they
are EXPENSIVE just like news articles (remember that warning about
Are you sure you want to spend thousands of dollars of other people's
money?), and can get lost in transit just like other news articles.
(Also, some sites simply do not honor cancels!)


The rest of this message is intended to serve as a short tutorial which
should help you learn how how to cancel an article. 

Sometimes the newsreading program would refuse to cancel your article
for no apparent reason. This may be caused by a misconfiguration problem.
You should see your local news adminstrator should this or any other
problem occur.

General: Almost every news reader requires that you find the article
and start reading it before you may cancel it.  Once you have found
the article, please skip to the section regarding your news reader.
In general, the 'cancel this article' command should be bound to the 'c'
or 'C' keys.

NN:
	As you're reading your article, press the C key at the prompt.
	NN will then ask you to "Confirm cancel", just type the
	letter y.  It will then say "Cancelling article <article-id>
	..." and then go on to the next selected article as if you
	had just finished reading that article and had hit the n key
	to go to the next article.

RN:
	At the article prompt, press the C key.  RN will then cancel
	the article for you and will re-display the article prompt.

TRN:
	At the article prompt, press the C key.  RN will then cancel
	the article for you and will re-display the article prompt.

	TRN is a nearly exact superset of rn, and all usual rn commands
	work just fine in trn.	(Although the "next article" command
	means something different within threads!)


READNEWS:
	At the "More? [...]" prompt, type the lowercase letter c and
	then press the return key.  The article will then be cancelled
	and readnews will go on to show you the next article.

VNEWS (News reader on VAX/VMS):
	At the "more?" prompt, type the c key.	VNEWS will then ask
	you to confirm by saying "cancel [n]?" at which point you press
	the y key.  VNEWS will then go on to display the next article.

VN:
	From within the article you would like to cancel, press
	'f' to followup.  At the top of the article, duplicate the
	"References" line.  Chance "References" to "Control".  Then,
	put the word "cancel " before the message ID.  Finally,
	post your followup.

NOTES:
	Press the D key.  Notes will respond with "Delete?".  Type y.
	Notes sends out articles in batches.  If an article has
	already been transferred to the network the article will
	not be deleted.  Notes will not respond to a cancel message.
	It will only delete articles created locally.

ANU-NEWS:
	While reading an article, enter the "CANCEL" command at the
	NEWS> prompt.

VM:
	For VM, users using netnews (directly from disk, not via NNTP),
	must positioning the cursor on the article and type cancel.
	The NNR VM NNTP client doesn't have cancel possibilities.

TIN:
	After bringing up the message you would like to cancel, type
	a capital C.  In tin PL5, you will be asked to confirm this
	by hitting a lower-case c.  Other news readers I'm not sure
	about but it's probably a similar mechanism.


XRN: Use the mouse to hit the [Cancel] button at the article level?
	Can some XRN mini-expert confirm this.

TASS: Is there such a news reader?

GNUS:
	In Subject Mode: `C' Cancel the current article you posted
     (`gnus-Subject-cancel-article').
	[First select the offending article as current, then type `C'.]

Original version by: Eugene N. Miya <eugene@nas.nasa.gov>
Some editing by: Yossi Gil <yogi@cs.ubc.ca>

Contributors: Andrew Scott Beals, Daniel Faigin, Eric P.
Scott, John Fereira, Michael Sullivan, Marshall G.
Flax <mgflax@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, Van Uytven Herman
<SYSTHVU@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be>, Doug McCarthy <dmccart@gomez.intel.com>
Frank Nusselder <murphy@cs.kun.nl>

--
Joseph (Yossi) Gil                 {alberta,uw-beaver,uunet}!ubc-cs!yogi
Dept. of Computer Science          yogi@cs.ubc.ca (cs.ubc.ca=137.82.8.5)
6356 Agricultural Road., Univ. of B.C.,             Tel: +1-604-822-8175
Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z2, Canada.       Fax: +1-604-822-5485

Newsgroups: ca.general