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With this method, posts will appear just as they do using a newsclient against a newserver. The news server simply displays them as it receives them.

If the date of the news post is used and placed into the dateline field, that is how vB orders the posts. This means they will NOT be shown in the correct order due to the time taken for news to propogate across usenet. You will get usenet posts coming in that are placed in the middle of threads. Also, they may not show up as new posts as they may be dated before your last visit. It becomes impossible to keep track of long threads.

The other problem is when a local reply is posted in a usenet thread. You will also get a whole bunch of usenet posts placed above it when the next run occurs. The local poster gets an email telling them someone has replied and can't see any posts after their one. Very confusing and frustrating.

These example aren't isolated occurances. It happens all the time. In fact, the very first version of this hack did exactly what you are asking for. It was changed for the reasons above.

The way it was handled in the more recent versions was by using the 'seq' (sequence) field. The thread was orderd using this column which meant everything was shown in the right sequence (although the message dates were not necessarily in order). This was achieved by editing the showthread, newreply, newthread and posting.php.

As far as checking goes, this was also done in the previous version to minimize the message dates appearing strange and out of sequence, and also to make sure posts were shown as new in a timely fashion. But, it's only of use when combined with the vB code changes.

Basically, you have a 3 choices.

• Use the news post date with no vB code changes and have posts that you may never see as they will be inserted in the middle of threads and not be marked as new.
• Use the method of setting the date to the date they are inserted into the forums. (Just as a real posts do). The posts are in the correct order, but have a 'wrong' date.
• Use the newspost date along with all the code changes that are necessary to support it and the inability to upgrade to newer vB versions without breaking the hack, vB, or both.