Do not send messages on unrelated matters to the list. Before sending a question to the mailing list, check whether it was already asked by using the archives' searchable index. I have two news servers set up in my configuration, and two news folders for each. The second news server is foreign, not a part of my ISP nntp server, and its newsgroups are not available on the local nntp server. I can read groups from the foreign server, but cannot post.
Pine validates groups only on the local server.
This means that, if the first server responds, and the requested newsgroup is not on that server, Pine will respond with an error, and will not proceed to the second server.