Xref: utzoo news.misc:4196 alt.sources:1460 comp.unix.questions:19464 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!yale!mintaka!mit-eddie!bu.edu!bu-cs!lectroid!jjmhome!cpoint!frog!john From: john@frog.UUCP (John Woods) Newsgroups: news.misc,alt.sources,comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: brilliance Message-ID: <11566@frog.UUCP> Date: 30 Jan 90 00:46:00 GMT References: <21982@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> Followup-To: news.misc Organization: Misanthropes-R-Us Lines: 28 In article <21982@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>, gary@oak.circa.ufl.edu writes: > In article <5192@solo8.cs.vu.nl>, maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath) writes... > |Cancelling a posted message means posting a cancel message. > Uh, what exactly does posting a cancel message involve? > A message with the subject CANCEL #xxxxx? Or the same message with the topic > CANCEL? Or what. > A cancel message is essentially an ordinary message distinguished by having a header line such as Control: cancel Such messages will be found in the "control" group, even if the Newsgroups: line reads differently (I was hoping to put such a control line in this message, but tried it out first and discovered that it doesn't do exactly what I wanted...). Other than that, the message has exactly the same format as a regular news article. Any text in the body will be ignored, but that tends to be the fate for many regular messages, too :-). When a system receives such a control message: if the referenced article is present, it is removed, and the cancel message is propagated downstream to other sites. If the article is not present, B news sites simply leave a note in the "history" file to junk the article if seen; C news (I believe) also forwards the cancel message in any case. -- John Woods, Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA, (508) 626-1101 ...!decvax!frog!john, john@frog.UUCP, ...!mit-eddie!jfw, jfw@eddie.mit.edu