In article ,
"Bill Sharpe" wrote:

...or just select them all and hit the delete key.

Sorry, that's just weird. Why would anyone want to take up hard-drive
space by downloading newsgroup messages at all (unless one's going to
work off-line)?

In my newsreader I just mark articles/threads as "read" and I never see
them again - but they never actually get downloaded, so they never have
to be deleted.