[net.news] How does one use "References" field?

mjk@tty3b.UUCP (Mike Kelly) (11/01/84)

In replies to my postings and in followup postings, there is always a
References: 
field that has names like <505@tty3b.UUCP>.  If I want to find that article,
how can I use the Reference name?  Our articles are listed in serial order,
so I can't just go to /netnews/spool/net/politics/505, for example.  (In this
case, the article was in the file /netnews/spool/net/politics/4166).  The only
solution I've come up with is to go to the spool directory for the newsgroup
and grep(1) for the reference number.  This seems pretty poor.  Am I missing
something?

Mike Kelly