Who is "Unknown?"

[Tonyo UK]

I have asked this question before. The responses when I originally raised the
point did not cover the situation I commonly see in this newsgroup.

The problem is this:

I open a thread and the person posting is "Unknown". Not only that, but the
posted message has been deleted. Now I understand how that can be the case if
the message is unlawful or immoral, or just disgusting. But frequently, the
message below "Unknown" in the same thread is from some person who is a
genuine responder. Rarely is the original posting included. Usually the
person responding starts with "I have the same problem ... " and we never see
what the original problem was.

Can someone more knowledgeable than me plesase enlighten me as to what is
going on here?

 

[DDW]

Can someone more knowledgeable than me plesase enlighten me as to what is
going on here?

You are accessing these groups via the MS web interface so what you
see is subject to whatever formulae are being used to filter out
messages they don't want. MOST of them involve the use of
obscenities, either in an original message or in a reply.

If you don't like that, you will have to..

Start using a new reader. Windows Mail, Windows Live Mail or
Thunderbird are all free and work nicely. Here are setup instructions
for using the MS clients:

http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/microsoft-newsgroup-setup-instructions-for-windows-mail/

THEN you will have to find a news server. Here are some free ones.
Motzarella is one of the better in the group:

AIOE http://news.aioe.org/ This one has been down for some time and
might never come back up.

Albasani http://albasani.net/index.html.en

ETT http://news.ett.com.ua/

Motzarella http://motzarella.org/

Solani http://news.solani.org/

Tornevall http://news.tornevall.net/

Usenet4all http://www.usenet4all.se

DDW

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Whoever chooses to use the name Unknown can do so in their settings, and
even change the return email address if they want. Looking at the properties
of the message in a newsreader will often show things like what newsreader
is used, and even the IP of some posts.
That aside, the 'unknown' posts that are blank are from IP addresses that
have been trolling, and generally breaking the 'Communities' guidelines, and
MS has moderation in place to remove those. The idiots who do that sort of
trolling do show up in newsreaders, since Usenet 'slurps' the news feed from
msnews.microsoft.com

The whole issue was solved last week when the MS Answers pages went online,
and the Communities are now phased out.