Terminology questions + fetch more articles wishlist

[Enrique Perez-Terron]

Hello,

1. I have difficulty using the gnus manual because I never know what
   the specialised terms mean. For instance,

   a. Having read what I want in group I have recently "subscribed"
      to, I want to see if there has arrived more news since the
      summary buffer was formed.  I look around in the menus, which
      should I choose?  Catchup?  Catchup all?  What is "Catchup to
      here"?  Would one of the "Mark" entries be better?

   b. I just mentioned "subscribe", by some fluke of the universe I
      (believe I) understand what that means.  How can I quickly
      check that I actually do? (besides trying it out.)

   c. Some days ago I decided to read to some depth about "scoring" to
      find out what it is, and what that is good for.  After several
      hours it dawns on me that perhaps it is way of making gnus guess
      what articles I would like to see, and suppress others.  Cool.
      Why must it take so long to find out?

   d. Have I found out?

   e. While reading about scoring there are some uses of another word,
      "kill".  What's that? 

   f. What was the "dribble file", again? (And how did it get this
      funny name?)

2. I would like to have newly arrived articles added to the summary
   buffer without deleting the existing threads, because I want to be
   able to go back and reread earlier articles in the thread. I have
   seen there are some commands to fetch thread or fetch related
   articles, but I think I would be most comfortable if the thread
   hierarchy remained stable modulo additions. (Additions should stand
   out somehow.)  Is there a way to do that?

3. If my dream (see 2.) comes true, it could easily become my
   nightmare unless I am still able to throw out old stuff.  How can I
   do that without throwing out the dream as well?

4. I would especially like to keep threads that I have contributed to
   easily available across restarts of emacs/gnus.

5. I have discovered on some occasion that there is a handy keyboard
   shortcut to enter the gnus info manual.  I have a brain dammage
   that prevents me from remembering it until I have used it a couple
   of times. (When I have used it a couple of times I hopefulley don't
   need it any more :)  Would it be a bad idea to have this shortcut
   show up in the help menu when any of the gnus-related buffers are
   active?

6. I always used to be very pleased by the high quality info manuals
   of emacs.  They are sometimes a little verbose, but that is very
   small price to pay for having such excellent gentle introductions
   to the subjects.  The gnus manual has some of the same verbose
   taste, but somehow there is something that doesn't quite work out.
   What is the best forum for discussing what to do about it?  After
   all, I might be able to contribute. (I am certainly willing to
   devote some time.)

Thanks