Michael Heerdegen wrote: > AFAIU Gnus stores such stuff in a file named ".newsrc.eld" (AFAIR > ".newsrc.el" in older Emacs versions). And indeed, among other things > there seems to be information about "seen" status of messages in that > file, as well as saved status, ticked and dormant status, all of that > Gnus specific stuff, but nothing related to the "read" (or "old") > status. So I guess the "read" status is fetched every time when you > open the group, along with the rest (list of existing messages etc).
Just FYI: For those who use the agent, (info "(gnus) Agent and flags") is also relevant in this regard. --