What?! Eurditeness is an issue???

Seriously, THANK YOU for the help, Joe User.

I passed this thread along to an MVP I'm acquainted with.

Clif

"Joe User" <joeu2004 wrote in message
...
I wrote:
I will isolate the "offensive" content

Well, we have a new "offensive" string to avoid: "c a s i o" without
interstitial spaces.

Clif made the mistake of using the word "occa sionally" (without the
interstitial space). Serves him right, really! He shoulda just wrote
"sometimes". :-) :-) :-)

Seriously, someone needs to inform MS that their spam filter (I
ass-u-me) is bad. Bad for business, since MS directs users to rely on
the MS "discussion groups" for tech support.

FYI, I want to reiterate that the removal of articles can happen
minutes later. Even I got fooled initially when my first test with
Clif failed posting succeeded. "Succeeded" meant: the header
appeared in OE. But try opening the message (a separate NNTP request)
some time later, and that's when we might get the "deleted from
server" message. I didn't! Oh yeah: wait some time longer (5 min, in
one case), reset the NG OE (i.e. flush headers and bodies), then read
headers again, and voila! The message is no longer there.

Usually, it seems that the article was never posted at all because we
do not even see the header in OE. But careful monitoring of the NNTP
protocol reveals that the article is accepted by the server and even
assigned a number, which is my definition of "posted". The removal
simply happens very soon thereafter, often within seconds.

But the MSnews server seems unusually busy today, so the removal delay
is quite long. This can lead to the seemingly "inexplicable"
situation where articles posted to the MSnews server appear on other
NG servers (Google Groups, MSDG, etc), but not on the MSnews server
itself. Those remote sites are simply lucky(?) to poll and pull from
the MSnews server before the article is removed.

Geesh! I just found myself scanning this text for the offensive
strings before pushing the send button. This is ridiculous!


----- original message -----

"Joe User" <joeu2004 wrote in message
...
"Clif McIrvin" wrote:
As I have attempted sending as a new post, as pasting into a
reply to this thread, and actually re-typing the entire message
on the possibility that some offensive non-printable sequence
had become embedded and all have failed, I will follow your
other suggestion and see what happens in the test group.

If you are saying you are still unable to post your intended message,
and it does not contain any of the known "offensive" text (hogwash!),
feel free to send the intended posting to me, and I will isolate the
"offensive" content or other root cause of the problem. I monitor
the TCP/NNTP protocol, so I know exactly what is going on.

Ideally, use Forward As Attachment (right click) to attach the failed
posting from your Sent Items folder. Send it to joeu2004 "at"
hotmail.com.


----- original message -----

"Clif McIrvin" wrote in message
...
Very helpful information ... I was suspecitng deletion based on
contents ... but so far have not ciphered out what the offending
text might be.

As I have attempted sending as a new post, as pasting into a reply
to this thread, and actually re-typing the entire message on the
possibility that some offensive non-printable sequence had become
embedded and all have failed, I will follow your other suggestion
and see what happens in the test group.

I did post here instead of the test group on purpose, knowing that,
strictly speaking, I was out of protocol.

Thanks for your kind reply.

Clif

"Joe User" <joeu2004 wrote in message
...
"Clif McIrvin" wrote:
I'm not used to having trouble posting via NNTP using
Outlook Express.

I have uncovered two instances wherein the MSnews server seems to
remove articles that contain certain text (anywhere in the ASCII
form of the message, not just the body).

Removal is usually almost instantaneous; but sometimes an article
persists for several minutes. This is why we sometimes see
"deleted from server" messages in OE.

As I recall, one instance is if the message contains the substring
"X Y Z" without the interstitial spaces. Of course "X Y Z" is a
common example name.

Another instance is if the message contains the substring "o n o"
without the interstitial spaces. Tony Valko (Biff) encountered
this when he used the word astro n omical".

It is better to use microsoft.public.test.here for test posts.
Yes, some problems could be newsgroup-specific. But that is very
rare, if ever.

(Some NG have different expiration criteria.)