previous versions of Communicator poluted the newsrc files with articles (this would happen when you clicked on a link like news://news.mozilla.org/3746EF3F.6080309@netscape.com legal newsgroup names can't contain @ or % News group names are structured into parts separated by dots, for example "netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news". Each part may be up to 14 characters long, and should consist only of letters, digits, "+" and "-", with at least one letter @ indicates an article and %40 is @ escaped. previous versions of Communicator also dumped the escaped version into the newsrc file So lines like this in a newsrc file should be ignored: 3746EF3F.6080309@netscape.com: 3746EF3F.6080309%40netscape.com: I've got a simple fix that just ignores any lines in the newsrc file that contains @ or %, and I'm also going to submit a fix for 4.6 when the time comes, we'll have to make sure that 5.0 doesn't add "3746EF3F.6080309%40netscape.com:" to the newsrc file if you load this url news://news.mozilla.com/3746EF3F.6080309%40netscape.com fixing this in 4.x is hard and risky (according to alecf), but at least this fix will prevent the user from seeing 3746EF3F.6080309%40netscape.com in the folder pane.

accepting. marking m6. I've got the fix, awaiting approval.

QA: here's how to test this (assuming you are already subscribed to newsgroups on news.mozilla.org, which you should be) quit 5.0 add these lines to your .newsrc file. (On UNIX, you should have a newsrc file ~/.newsrc-news.mozilla.org) 37437708.692A864A%40netscape.com: 3746EF3F.6080309@netscape.com: start up 5.0 builds before 5-23 will show 37437708.692A864A%40netscape.com and 3746EF3F.6080309@netscape.com in the folder pane under news.mozilla.org. builds 5-23 and after will not show these abominations in the folder pane.

Verified, 5_24 Linux and Win32, 5_25 Mac.