hput via "Announcements and discussions for GNUS, the GNU Emacs Usenet newsreader (in English)" <info-gnus-english@gnu.org> writes:
> I once had some working knowledge of using gnus agent. But it leaked > away over the last 20 and more yrs. As it became faster and faster to > get news. > > I want to acquire several thousand messages from certain groups. > > Ones that likely carry info I most want to access. So back then I used to > download Thousands of old messages overtime so as not to bog down any > servers. > > I lost all my old thousands of messages over many host changes, moves > and fool blunders. Have you considered setting up your own local nntp server, a Leafnode instance or something? Listening to what you're describing, I think that might end up being a more feasible approach, and might give you several other side benefits.
