Julie, Louis, Henry and a couple others have all sent in approximately the same question to the Reader feedback mailing list:

“I want to be able to delete articles without having to read them or go through a list individually. Please tell me how I can do this.”

“I do not need to keep old, read items. So why can't I get rid of what I no longer want. A delete feature based on age of item would be nice. Otherwise, I'll have a huge volume of items accumulating.”

“How do I delete updates from my reader? Do they automatically refresh or do old posts just accumulate indefinitely?”

Today, I thought I’d answer this question for everyone. I’ve learned over the years that if a small percentage of people are confused about how something works, then there’s a pretty good chance a lot of other people are confused as well.

Question:

How do I delete posts from Reader?

Answer:

One of the features of myEarthLink Reader is that you never have to delete an article or mark it "read" or "unread". myEarthLink Reader shows you only articles that are new since your last visit. This way, you don't have to manage news articles like you manage your email; you get just what's fresh each time you return to the page. We continually delete a portion of the oldest articles to prevent too many articles from accumulating in your account.

However, articles that you add to “Your Saved Articles” aren’t deleted during this periodic purging of articles.

Please let us know if you have questions and we’ll do our best to address them here on the blog.