Today a number of very old articles, from around 2006 to 2010,
have been posted on comp.lang.c with new article numbers.

This is apparently the result of a glitch on eternal-september.org.
The openwatcom.* hierarchy had been removed, but it was restored
today. The reposted articles were cross-posted to comp.lang.c and
various newsgroups under openwatcom.*. Similarly, 20 old articles
reappeared in comp.std.c.

There's probably nothing to be done about it. Just pay attention
to the date on any articles before posting followups.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 11/2/2025 1:33 PM, Keith Thompson wrote:

Today a number of very old articles, from around 2006 to 2010,
have been posted on comp.lang.c with new article numbers.

This is apparently the result of a glitch on eternal-september.org.
The openwatcom.* hierarchy had been removed, but it was restored
today. The reposted articles were cross-posted to comp.lang.c and
various newsgroups under openwatcom.*. Similarly, 20 old articles
reappeared in comp.std.c.

There's probably nothing to be done about it. Just pay attention
to the date on any articles before posting followups.

I noticed that as well. I thought it might be a form of spam in a sense?

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 02/11/2025 22:33, Keith Thompson wrote:

Today a number of very old articles, from around 2006 to 2010,
have been posted on comp.lang.c with new article numbers.

This is apparently the result of a glitch on eternal-september.org.
The openwatcom.* hierarchy had been removed, but it was restored
today. The reposted articles were cross-posted to comp.lang.c and
various newsgroups under openwatcom.*. Similarly, 20 old articles
reappeared in comp.std.c.

There's probably nothing to be done about it. Just pay attention
to the date on any articles before posting followups.

I was about to reply to one of them, but fortunately spotted the date of
the posts.

Thanks for the explanation - I had suspected a newsserver glitch.

(I think the Open Watcom compiler is still used by the FreeDOS
community, and perhaps the DOSBox folk?)


--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> writes:

Today a number of very old articles, from around 2006 to 2010,
have been posted on comp.lang.c with new article numbers.

This is apparently the result of a glitch on eternal-september.org.

Ah, this is why I didn't see the reposts, just the replies.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> wrote at 21:33 this Sunday (GMT):

Today a number of very old articles, from around 2006 to 2010,
have been posted on comp.lang.c with new article numbers.

This is apparently the result of a glitch on eternal-september.org.
The openwatcom.* hierarchy had been removed, but it was restored
today. The reposted articles were cross-posted to comp.lang.c and
various newsgroups under openwatcom.*. Similarly, 20 old articles
reappeared in comp.std.c.

There's probably nothing to be done about it. Just pay attention
to the date on any articles before posting followups.

Can you set your newsreader to mark articles before a date as read? I'd
imagine setting it to do that with everything before this year could
help clean it up.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 03.11.2025 17:50, candycanearter07 wrote:

Can you set your newsreader to mark articles before a date as read? [...]

Mine cannot (I think). - I usually just mark the thread as read to
ignore it. Of course anyone responding highlights the thread again.
Ah, well. But there's worse things...

Janis


--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Mon, 3 Nov 2025 16:50:08 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 wrote:

Can you set your newsreader to mark articles before a date as read?

Newsreaders keep track of read/unread articles by index number rather than message ID, I believe. But the index number is server-dependent. If the
server offers up a new-old article with a number higher than your last-
read number for that group, then the newsreader has no way of knowing if you?ve seen it before.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

In article <10eb1e1$34i0o$2@dont-email.me>,
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

Can you set your newsreader to mark articles before a date as read?

Newsreaders keep track of read/unread articles by index number rather than >message ID, I believe.

It's possible to do either. You can ask an NNTP server for the range
of article numbers available in a newsgroup, and keep track of the
last one read, or ask for a list of message IDs received since a give
time.

-- Richard

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2025-11-03 11:50, candycanearter07 wrote:

Can you set your newsreader to mark articles before a date as read? I'd

imagine setting it to do that with everything before this year could
help clean it up.

Mozilla Thunderbird's message filter can delete messages, and the
conditions for a filter can include the Date: header of the message, but
that header can only be compared to a fixed date. If you want to filter
out all old messages, you'll have to periodically update the date used
in the comparison.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid>
writes:

Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> wrote at 21:33 this Sunday (GMT):

Today a number of very old articles, from around 2006 to 2010,
have been posted on comp.lang.c with new article numbers.

This is apparently the result of a glitch on eternal-september.org.
The openwatcom.* hierarchy had been removed, but it was restored
today. The reposted articles were cross-posted to comp.lang.c and
various newsgroups under openwatcom.*. Similarly, 20 old articles
reappeared in comp.std.c.

There's probably nothing to be done about it. Just pay attention
to the date on any articles before posting followups.

Can you set your newsreader to mark articles before a date as read? I'd imagine setting it to do that with everything before this year could
help clean it up.

There might be some way to do it. Since I use Gnus, it should at
least be possible to write something in Emacs Lisp to do the job.

But at least for me it's not worth it. The old articles are in
a small handful of threads (5 of them if I'm counting correctly)
which are easily ignored. I've already skipped them.

What's more difficult is filtering out the thread spawned by my
post and the followups to the old articles. Oh well.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Mon, 3 Nov 2025 20:31:50 -0000 (UTC), Richard Tobin wrote:

In article <10eb1e1$34i0o$2@dont-email.me>,
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

Can you set your newsreader to mark articles before a date as
read?

Newsreaders keep track of read/unread articles by index number
rather than message ID, I believe.

It's possible to do either.

But imagine keeping track of message IDs going back 10-20 years, and
then an article from 30 years ago pops up, and it doesn?t know *not*
to show it to you.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

In article <10ebcm6$37t6l$2@dont-email.me>,
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

Can you set your newsreader to mark articles before a date as
read?

Newsreaders keep track of read/unread articles by index number
rather than message ID, I believe.

It's possible to do either.

But imagine keeping track of message IDs going back 10-20 years, and
then an article from 30 years ago pops up, and it doesn't know *not*
to show it to you.

I wasn't suggesting that it made that easier. Whichever way you
do it, the article has a date header.

-- Richard

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Tue, 4 Nov 2025 00:24:12 -0000 (UTC), Richard Tobin wrote:

Whichever way you do it, the article has a date header.

That date header comes from the NNTP client. Which could have a completely wrong idea of the date/time.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

At Tue, 4 Nov 2025 07:28:17 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro
<ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Tue, 4 Nov 2025 00:24:12 -0000 (UTC), Richard Tobin wrote:

Whichever way you do it, the article has a date header.

That date header comes from the NNTP client. Which could have a
completely wrong idea of the date/time.

Unless I'm mistaken, most NNTP reader connections won't accept
a POST Date: header too far from the current time.

(I haven't been a news admin for going on 20 years, so my memory
may be faulty.)

And, an anecdote: I used to graph article transit time by comparing
the article Date: to the arrival time, and discovered that most people's software was accurate enough to determine if a feed was slow. That
was in the 00's though, so maybe things are different now.

Anyway, it was fairly easy, since that info is in the history
file.

x-posted and fu2 news.software.nntp.

--
-v ASUS TUF DASH F15 x86_64 NVIDIA RTX 3060 Mobile 6G
OS: Linux 6.14.0-35-generic D: Mint 22.2 DE: Xfce 4.18
NVIDIA: 510.47.03 Mem: 15.9G
"If it's stupid and works, then it ain't stupid"

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

In article <10ec9uh$3fgtk$1@dont-email.me>,
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

Whichever way you do it, the article has a date header.

That date header comes from the NNTP client. Which could have a completely >wrong idea of the date/time.

All kinds of things *could* happen, but if a bunch of old articles get accidentally revived they may well have their original dates on them.

-- Richard

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

On Tue, 4 Nov 2025 00:24:12 -0000 (UTC), Richard Tobin wrote:

Whichever way you do it, the article has a date header.

That date header comes from the NNTP client. Which could have a completely wrong idea of the date/time.

Do you have any reason to believe that any of the articles in the
recent flood might have significantly incorrect date headers?

If not, why bring it up?

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote at 21:13 this Monday (GMT):

On 2025-11-03 11:50, candycanearter07 wrote:

Can you set your newsreader to mark articles before a date as read? I'd

imagine setting it to do that with everything before this year could
help clean it up.

Mozilla Thunderbird's message filter can delete messages, and the
conditions for a filter can include the Date: header of the message, but
that header can only be compared to a fixed date. If you want to filter
out all old messages, you'll have to periodically update the date used
in the comparison.

Couldn't you just check "Date before: 2025-01-01"?
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> writes:

Today a number of very old articles, from around 2006 to 2010,
have been posted on comp.lang.c with new article numbers.

This is apparently the result of a glitch on eternal-september.org.
The openwatcom.* hierarchy had been removed, but it was restored
today. The reposted articles were cross-posted to comp.lang.c and
various newsgroups under openwatcom.*. Similarly, 20 old articles
reappeared in comp.std.c.

There's probably nothing to be done about it. Just pay attention
to the date on any articles before posting followups.

There's been some discussion in this thread about automatically avoiding
very old articles.

That's fine if you want to do that, but I don't think it's worth the
effort. This is likely to be a one-time event caused by an old
hierarchy being restored. I don't think it's likely to happen again.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2025-11-04 16:10, candycanearter07 wrote:

James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote at 21:13 this
Monday (GMT):

On 2025-11-03 11:50, candycanearter07 wrote:

Can you set your newsreader to mark articles before a date as

read? I'd

I should have mentioned that a message filter can mark an article as
read. For some reason I misread your message and thought you wanted to
delete them.

imagine setting it to do that with everything before this year could
help clean it up.

Mozilla Thunderbird's message filter can delete messages, and the
conditions for a filter can include the Date: header of the message, but
that header can only be compared to a fixed date. If you want to filter
out all old messages, you'll have to periodically update the date used
in the comparison.

Couldn't you just check "Date before: 2025-01-01"?

Sure, if that's the date you want to use.



--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote at 11:09 this Friday (GMT):

On 2025-11-04 16:10, candycanearter07 wrote:

James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote at 21:13 this
Monday (GMT):

On 2025-11-03 11:50, candycanearter07 wrote:

Can you set your newsreader to mark articles before a date as

read? I'd

I should have mentioned that a message filter can mark an article as
read. For some reason I misread your message and thought you wanted to
delete them.

imagine setting it to do that with everything before this year could
help clean it up.

Mozilla Thunderbird's message filter can delete messages, and the
conditions for a filter can include the Date: header of the message, but >>> that header can only be compared to a fixed date. If you want to filter
out all old messages, you'll have to periodically update the date used
in the comparison.

Couldn't you just check "Date before: 2025-01-01"?

Sure, if that's the date you want to use.

It seems like a reasonable date to me. How would messages from almost a
year ago be that relevant?
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2025-11-07 12:30, candycanearter07 wrote:

James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote at 11:09 this
Friday (GMT):

On 2025-11-04 16:10, candycanearter07 wrote:

James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote at 21:13 this

Mozilla Thunderbird's message filter can delete messages, and the

conditions for a filter can include the Date: header of the
message, but
that header can only be compared to a fixed date. If you want to filter >>>> out all old messages, you'll have to periodically update the date used >>>> in the comparison.

Couldn't you just check "Date before: 2025-01-01"?

Sure, if that's the date you want to use.

It seems like a reasonable date to me. How would messages from almost a
year ago be that relevant?

My point was that, if you want to filter out messages that are more than
year old, you'll have to update it to 2026-01-01 at the end of 2026,
update it to 2027-01-01 at the end of 2027, etc.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote at 16:00 this Sunday (GMT):

On 2025-11-07 12:30, candycanearter07 wrote:

James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote at 11:09 this
Friday (GMT):

On 2025-11-04 16:10, candycanearter07 wrote:

James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote at 21:13 this

Mozilla Thunderbird's message filter can delete messages, and the

conditions for a filter can include the Date: header of the
message, but
that header can only be compared to a fixed date. If you want to filter >>>>> out all old messages, you'll have to periodically update the date used >>>>> in the comparison.

Couldn't you just check "Date before: 2025-01-01"?

Sure, if that's the date you want to use.

It seems like a reasonable date to me. How would messages from almost a
year ago be that relevant?

My point was that, if you want to filter out messages that are more than
year old, you'll have to update it to 2026-01-01 at the end of 2026,
update it to 2027-01-01 at the end of 2027, etc.

Doesn't seem that hard, plus you could leave it as is and still catch
any erroniously sent messages with a timestamp of 1996, no matter when
it is.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)