# Posting an Article

You can post an article either as a followup to a previous article, or as a "brand new" article. Note that often it is preferable to respond to an article via an electronic mail message rather than by another article; see Usenet Etiquette and Mailing a Message.

An article contains headers followed by the text of the article. Each article is directed to one or more newsgroups by a "Newsgroups:" line in the header. If you want to send an article to more than one newsgroup, type the names of the newsgroups in the "Newsgroups:" header field, separated by commas.

If you are running Windows 3.x, WinVN needs to know your time zone so it can generate valid dates. See Setting the TZ Environment Variable.

Followup Articles

A followup article has the same "Subject:" line as the article which inspired it. (The notation "Re:" is added.) This makes it easier for other Usenet News users browsing the newsgroup to follow the discussion. Also, a followup article typically selectively quotes the earlier article, again to make the discussion easier to follow.

To compose a followup article, select the Followup Article option from the Respond menu or toolbar of an article window. WinVN creates a composition window. The headers of the article in this window are filled in with information taken from your Personal Info configuration and from the header of the referenced article. The full text of the referenced article is also included in the posting window, with each line preceded by a ">" to indicate that another article is being quoted. You should delete irrelevant quoted lines in your followup article. Some news servers will reject postings which contain more quoted text than new text.

You may optionally send a copy to the original author of the posting via an electronic mail message by typing the author's return address in the "Cc:" header field. You can configure the composition window to pre-fill the "Cc:" address during followup. See Configure Compose.

New Articles

To compose a "brand new" article, select the New Article option from the Articles menu or toolbar of a group window, or by selecting New Article from the Utillities menu or toolbar of the the main window. WinVN creates a composition window for your new article. The "Newsgroup:" header field should contain the name of the newsgroup to which you wish to post. If you wish to cross-post to multiple newsgroups, separate the names of the newsgroups by commas.. Other information in the header fields is based on your Personal Info configuration. You must fill in a subject for the new article.

Sending the Article

When you have completed composing your article, you can send it to the network or cancel it. See Composition Menu Commands. If the article is posted successfully, composition window is closed.