From: eugene@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
Subject: [l/m 6/24/90] How to cancel news articles
Followup-To: poster
Organization: NAS Program, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 92 11:30:45 GMT
Reply-To: eugene@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)

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:

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.  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
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.

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 Andrew Scott Beals, Daniel Faigin, Eric P. Scott, John Fereira,
Michael Sullivan.

Attribution information will disappear with time.
Newsgroups: ca.general