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Vic Smith

On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:51:09 -0400, wrote:

On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:40:52 -0400, Gene Kearns
wrote:

On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:34:08 -0400, John H. penned the following well
considered thoughts to the readers of rec.boats:

|
|If he is using Agent, it is not necessary to 'subscribe' to a group to see
|headers, read the posts, or respond to the posts. One simply looks in the
|"All Groups" list, finds 'rec.boats' and downloads the headers.

I don't remember that far back, you are using Version 1.91.... that is
6 years old. I don't remember a time when you didn't have to
subscribe. Certainly, since 2.0 it was necessary to subscribe. Ditto
every other Usenet client I have used in the last few years. He's
using Google Groups,,,, one must subscribe....

In all pre-2.0 versiopns of agent, you can download sample headers, or
all headers in any group without subscribing. If you plan on reading a
group, even occasionally, you would be better off subscribing so you
don't have to download all previous headers again every time.
"Subscribing" is meaningless. You aren't joining or quitting anything.
It's merely a local setting on your computer telling your own
newsreader how to treat a particular group. Not much different from
bookmarking a website. The news servers are completely unaware and
oblivious to it.

Here's from somebody currently using Agent 1.93. Me.
You can look in "All Groups" anytime and get recent messages
from "unsubscribed" ng's.
Message counter removal is optional should you remove a "subscribed"
group from subscription. Otherwise message counters are maintained in
the Agent DB whether the group is subscribed or not.
I read a few groups occasionally, and don't want to pull their recent
posts in every time I do so for my subscribed groups - because it
slows down getting to what I want to read NOW.
Won't get into anybody else's definition of "subscribed."

--Vic