i'm guessing those things happen cuz of the routes any single post takes from the senders isp til it arrives at the receivers isp. they all go different routes. sometimes those in between servers will be in maintenence mode or shut down completely for a while for any number of reasons, including floods, hurricanes, power outages, oops we overslept and forgot to do something to our server, so the original msg stops there and doesnt carry on to other servers til it arrives at your place. that is the nature of the internet and nuttin at all we can do about it. granted some servers are better than others but all those inbetweens are out of our control, no one to bitch at about the bad service like we can do with our own isp, to fix the problem. :( at least the original msgs will show up on someones reply. i think all of us have some of those missing original posts. that is my best explanation, such that it is, not the best perhaps but tis all i can think of just now.
if seeing the route of any particular msg interests you at all... once you've read a msg, right click on the header in your email reader, click on propertys, go in there and check the msg source. info there includes things like the return addy, the reader program in use from the sender of that post, the top line is the route backwards, so the end of the line is the senders server (could be the isp or the ng server, like aioe, eternal-sept), the beginning of the line is the server you're reading it thru, in my case now its aioe. clear as mud no doubt, sorry, best i can do. fwiw, j.
"Alice in PA" wrote... OK, I got so tired of just receiving people's responses to messages, that I switched to Eternal-September. Things are a little better now, but I still don't receive the original messages from Sunny, Leslie and the furbabies, Janner, and Amy in CNY, among others. I get the responses, and then read the original message if it is contained in the response...kinda backwards! Does anyone else have this problem? I also follow Alt.sewing, and it has eliminated all the spam from that site, which is great.