Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!dsi!dan
From: dan@dsi.COM (Dan Mick)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: A couple of probably commonly asked questions
Message-ID: <247@dsi.COM>
Date: 27 Sep 89 22:19:38 GMT
References: <4055@infocenter.UUCP> <5354@merlin.usc.edu>
Reply-To: dan@dsi.UUCP (Dan Mick)
Organization: KFW Corporation, Newbury Park, CA
Lines: 12

For rn:

You can "followup" to an empty message by joining a group with no unreads
(say 'g '), say 'y' when it asks if you want to join the group
with 0 unreads, and do 'f' for followup.  You'll get into your editor
as though you were doing a followup to a message, but with no references.
Try it in a local newsgroup to avoid public embarrassment.

For re-subscribing to newsgroups you've unsubscribed from, I think 'g 
' does the trick.  You can also edit .newsrc directly, I suppose,
and get rid of the '!' on the line with the newsgroup in question.
(Don't have hard evidence that either of these work.)