An Introduction to Newsgroups

An Introduction to Newsgroups

Acknowledgement

Much of the content of this document was copied from an article by Tim McLellan An Introduction to Newsnet News which can be found here:

http://www.islandnet.com/~tmc/html/articles/usentnws.htm

Introduction

Newsgroups are a capability of the internet that serve as electronic bulletin boards.

It is a structured place where people can ask questions and get answers or post their view on a particular topic or subject.

Anyone with an internet connection and a browser can participate. You can freely post items on the bulletin boards and read the posts of others.

When you send an e-mail message, the only people who can read it are the recipients (for the most part). When you post a message on a newsgroup, every person on the Internet could read it and respond to it. Not that they ever would, but they could.

There are lots of different newsgroups

Newsgroups contain many, ongoing discussions, dealing with a wide variety of subjects. They are also called conferences, forums, and discussion groups. Each newsgroup involves one subject or topic. Some newsgroups deal with very specific topics, for example: Meso-American Archaeology (sci.archaeology.mesoamerican). Other newsgroups are more general in nature, as in Windows XP General (Microsoft.public.windowsxp.general).

There are tens of thousands of newsgroups. Each one is organized around a particular topic or subject. Within each newsgroup, groups of messages are organized into topics or threads. Within a topic, there can be any number of messages.

When you post an article in a particular newsgroup, the only people who might read your article are those interested in the subject area of the newsgroup. This sharpens the focus of attention and experience on your posted article. Instead of generally addressing everyone on the Internet, you are reaching out to only those people who have shown enough of an interest in the subject to read that newsgroup.

Due to the inherent nature of Newsgroups, there are many people who give freely of their time and experiences. If you ask a question in a newsgroup, you're sure to receive a few answers and perhaps raise some discussion between those who did answer. By the time you get a final answer, people may have debated the question for quite awhile. It is often amazing to see how fast you can get a response to a question or problem from other volunteers who are happy to share their knowledge and experience.

You will find that most people reading and replying in a newsgroup are very helpful and considerate. However, you will also come across a few who haven't the patience to deal with your question, or they may be rude in their replies. Unfortunately, that is also an inherent part of Newsgroups.

Newsgroup Names

Every newsgroup has a distinct and fairly understood name. The naming convention creates the newsgroup names in a hierarchical fashion. That is, each name comprises of one or more words; each word separated by a period. Each subsequent word clarifies or narrows the subject matter represented in the previous words.

For example, look at the newsgroup name "comp.periphs.printers". First of all, the newsgroup deals with computers, and so it has "comp" as the first word in its name. Within the broad subject of computers, this newsgroup deals with computer peripheral equipment, and so it has "periphs" as the second word in its name. Finally, within the subject of computer peripherals, this newsgroup specifically deals with printers, and so the last word in the newsgroup name is "printers".

If the news administrators felt that an existing newsgroup was encompassing too broad a subject matter, they could subdivide it into smaller newsgroups.

Major Newsgroup Categories

Usenet News divides the newsgroups into major categories by the first word or level in the newsgroup names. Some of the more common first-level categories include:

alt. - alternative discussions

comp. - computers

rec. - recreational interests

soc. - social discussions

More specific newsgroup categories include:

can. - Canadian discussions

k12. - kindergarten to grade 12 discussions

The newsgroup naming convention makes it convenient for system administrators to restrict access to a specific newsgroup or to an entire series of newsgroups. Some of the newsgroup subjects are controversial. Others may be less applicable to a specific community of users. As examples, administrators could restrict access to all of the newsgroups that start with "alt.nonsense." or "ubedrock.". System administrators are under no obligation to carry all of the newsgroups in Usenet News.

Reading Newsgroups

Newsgroups can be accessed by software known as Newsreaders and by certain internet search engines such as Google.

Accessing Newsgroups via Google.

To access newsgroups via Google, enter: groups.google.com

If you don’t know what specific newsgroups might hold information you are seeking, you can enter a search in the first text box at the top of the Google page. You do this just like you would if you were trying to search the internet. However, the content that is being searched here is all newsgroups.

So if you entered: Windows setup new printer

You might get the following:

You can click on a topic of interest just as you would for the results of an internet search.

Note that at the right, after the topic title, the group from which the information was displayed is shown. That is a good way to find out about newsgroups that may be covering a topic of interest.

You can see from this page alone that there are similar newsgroups for different versions of windows:

microsoft.public.win98.printing

microsoft.public.windowsxp.print fax

And from a different part of the newsgroup structure:

comp.periphs.printers

If you want to search for newsgroups covering a particular topic, such as printers, you could enter “printers” in the second search box. The results would be like this:

For now ignore the first section and focus on the middle of the page where it says

“Groups 1 – 15 or 544”. There are 544 newsgroups that are associated with the word printers. You can browse through the list of all 544.

If you find one of interest, say comp.periphs.printers, simply click on it and you will be taken to that newsgroup.

You can scroll through the various messages and click on any of interest.

Also you can search for keywords to find more specific information. For example, I could enter Lexmark Z51. I would see the following:

If you look at the second entry, “Lexmark Z51 Feeds paper crooked” you can see that there are 42 messages and 15 authors. If you click on the title you will see:

You can now read through the thread of messages, all on this specific topic “Lexmark Z51 feeds paper crooked”.

Newsreaders

An alternative to Google’s groups interface is to use software called a newsreader. There are many newsreaders available, some are free, others are shareware, and still others are available by retail. These newsreaders include WinVN, Agent, NewsXpress, and Gravity for the PC. Some email programs like Mozilla Thunderbird also provide newsgroup reading and message posting capabilities.