Newsgroups
Newsgroups consist of users linked together in groups of
people interested in a similar subject. They are online
clubs. If you are interested in Italian football you will
probably find a newsgroup devoted to that subject. Join it,
and swop information, chat, download files and articles,
post letters to the group, and receive letters from other
members. Items can be posted up to the newsgroup's site,
which is the equivalent of an online notice board. All
members are linked through a group email facility within the
newsgroup. Thus, a mail can be sent to some members, an
individual member, or to the whole lot in one go. There are
thousands of these groups, each dedicated to a different
interest: computing, tv programs, hobbies, politics.
Newsgroups are accessed through your ISP's news server,
or by a separate news server. Not every ISP carries every
newsgroup. In fact very few ISP's carry more than a few
basic groups.
Joining a group is easy and free of charge, and usually
free of entry restrictions.
The quality and style of newsgroups varies enormously.
Some groups are mainly for discussions, others are rather
like open helplines, where people can ask for, and get,
solutions to technical problems.
Some newsgroups are moderated. This means they have
someone checking all incoming articles before broadcasting
them to the members. This reduces the quantity of irrelevant
and/or boring and/or obscene post. It also causes complaints
of censorship. However, if you don't like the idea of
moderated newsgroups you can always join some that aren't.
They are usually not so good, precisely because there is no
mechanism for cutting out the tedious and irrelevant stuff.
Newsgroups are traditionally part of what is called
Usenet, the Users
Network. The emails you send off to a newsgroup are
called articles. Sending off these articles is called
posting to the newsgroup.
There are various categories:
- comp
- news
- misc
- rec
- sci
- soc
- talk
- biz
- alt
|
- computing
- newsgroups
- miscellaneous
- recreational
- scientific
- social and cultural
- debate oriented
- business
- all kinds of topics
|
Newsgroups are organised in a heirarchical structure with
major sections sub-divided by topic.
A good group for a new user to join would be
news.announce.newusers.
Once you join a newsgroup you will find a whole new
language opens up to you. But you need to get there first.
First you need a news reader. There are several of these:
Free Agent for Windows (http://www.forteinc.com/forte/),
Newswatcher for the Mac (ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/mac-umich/util/comm/usenet/newswatcher2.0.sit.hqx)
If you don't have a news reader, use your browser, which
should have a built-in newsreader. Look on the menubar to
see if there is anything remotely to do with news. If you
have Netscape Communicator then you will have a newsreader
as part of the package. You will have to configure it to
point at your news server. You will need to contact your ISP
to find out if they have a news server, and if so, what its
URL is. Usually, it will be your ISP's address with
news. in front of it.
Once logged on you need to know where you are going - a
typical net problem. However, there are search engines for
newsgroups. Try one of the following:
Other resources for finding newsgroups are listed below.
Discussion Groups
Reference.com is
a gateway to more than 150,000 discussion groups. This index
includes more than 15,000 newsgroups, 100,000 mailing lists,
and 25,000 Web forums on the Internet. Reference.com also
provides quick methods for searching and browsing its index.
Usenet and
Listserv
Tile.net is a web site
designed to make listservs and USENET newsgroups easy to
find. You can search Tile.net listservs by description,
name, popularity, subject, sponsoring organization, or host
country. USENET newsgroups are organized by index,
description, and newsgroup hierarchy. Tile.net also provides
information about FTP sites and computer product vendors.
Newsgroup FAQs
The MIT
Newsgroup FAQs web site has a great resource if you're
looking for the FAQ of a specific newsgroup. It's an FTP
file site that links you to nearly all the FAQs for
newsgroups. Newsgroups on the site are listed
alphabetically, so you can quickly scroll down to the group
you want and access its FAQ.
Some newsgroups are patrolled by some uptight guys who
will think nothing of having a really good go at you if you
post something inappropriate. If you fall foul of them you
will get flamed - receive lots of nasty mail.
When you first join a newsgroup, hang around without
posting for a while. This is called lurking. Read the
articles and get a feel for the flavour of the group.
Before you post any questions to the group do read the
FAQs. FAQ stands for Frequently Asked
Questions. They are a great source of information.
If you join in and post an article, keep it sweet and
short. Remember it will in all probability be posted to
several thousand members. This constitues a great amount of
bandwidth (space on the net), and time (other
people's) and cost (someone has to pay for the transport. If
you bore the pants off everyone you will be the group's most
unpopular member.
If you only want to reply to the author of a posting,
email it, don't post it to the group.
If you want to find out what newsgroups there are, and
what their address is you should check out
www.dejanews.com. This
site has a great directory, together with Help files. It is
a good place to begin.
Newsgroups are also a great place to advertise your
existence. If you have a web site and you want to promote
what is on it, you need to visit newsgroups of associated
subjects. We will go into this in more detail, including how
to set up your own newsgroup, in a later section.
