Xref: utzoo news.admin:1899 news.groups:3189
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!pyramid!decwrl!reid
From: reid@decwrl.dec.com (Brian Reid)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups
Subject: Re: why news.announce.conferences shows up as so popular
Message-ID: <349@bacchus.DEC.COM>
Date: 4 Apr 88 05:17:26 GMT
References: <348@bacchus.DEC.COM> <3228@phri.UUCP>
Reply-To: reid@decwrl.UUCP (Brian Reid)
Organization: DEC Western Research
Lines: 11

>> if a person looks at news.announce.conferences once a year, he is counted
>> as an active reader, because he has an unexpired message marked as read. 
>> 
>> There's really no way around this.

>	Sure there is.  For each article marked as read, see if the
>modification time on the file in /usr/spool/news is within the default
>expiration time for that system.  The cost to do this may turn out to be
>prohibitive, but it's certainly possible.

Let me rephrase my statement, then. There is really no practical way around
this.