More Stuff About Newsgroups (V1.0)
The bagpipe newsgroup was
the subject of a recent Pipeline article.
The information on this page is partly taken from there, as well as
other Web sources.
Contents
What are Newsgroups
Newsgroup Names
Newsgroup Software
Configuring Your Newsreader
Using Newsgroups
Web-based News Services
Other Newsgroups
Troubleshooting and Other Resources
What are Newsgroups
Newsgroups, like email, are a very ancient idea in the
Internet. For example, they pre-date the World Wide Web by at least a
decade, depending on who's counting and what their perspective is.
The word newsgroups is the modern name for what we're
talking about. Historically, the system has also been called
usenet, netnews and just
news. The basic idea is that the news system provides
a large number of global, shared bulletin boards or
newsgroups, which are used to conduct discussions on
various topics. You can see immediately that the word
news is being used in an entirely different way to its
more common meaning in the mainstream media. Anyone can
post (with some restrictions) an article to any
newsgroup at any time.
Each individual submission to a newsgroup is called an
article, and bears a strong family resemblance to an
email message, in that they always contain a From:
header line identifying the sender, a Subject:
line, the Date: (and time) this article was
posted, etc.
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Newsgroup Names
The names of newsgroups are written as a dotted sequence of words, in a
hierarchical naming scheme. For example, the most interesting newsgroup
for readers of this page is probably rec.music.makers.bagpipe,
the bagpipe newsgroup. This newsgroup is in the
"recreational" (ie, rec) area, sub-area "music", second level sub-area
concerned with music making, and finally bagpipes within that. You
might expect, for example, that there'd be a newsgroup called rec.music.makers.guitar,
as indeed there is. It's all pretty logical.
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Newsgroup Software
Software for reading newsgroups is freely available. For example,
Netscape Communicator has a "newsreader" built-in, accessed (in later
versions on both PCs and Macs) by clicking the "Read Newsgroups" button
down at the bottom righthand corner of the window. If you're running a
newish version of MS Windoze, you'll probably use the newsreader
feature of Outlook Express. If you're running Windoze 95 with an older
version of Internet Explorer, you can read newsgroups using the
separate application "Internet News". There are also a slew of
third-party newsreaders available, both freebie and shareware, such as
WinVN, XNews and Free Agent for PCs, and Marconi, InterNews and Cindy's
Newsmailer for the Macintosh. There's (naturally) a newsgroup devoted
to newsreader software:
news.software.readers.
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Configuring Your Newsreader
Using the various newsreader software packages is easy -- usually you
have to first configure the name of a news server in
the Preferences or Options menu. If
you don't know this information ask your ISP, or check their
"Configuration Hints" (or whatever it's called) Web page. Most
commonly, it's on the piece of paper they give you when you join their
service.
You then (usually) have to subscribe to the groups
you're interested in. Most software makes this a bit easier by
presenting a menu of options, but it can still be tedious.
Alternatively, you can sometimes just type in the name of a newsgroup.
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Using Newsgroups
Reading articles in newsgroups is pretty intuitive. Newsreaders
typically list all of the currently active threads
within a group, and there's normally a "next" button to move from the
current article to any followups. You'll find there's
usually a mind-boggling number of active threads at any particular
time, and often some very interesting stuff being discussed. You will
also find (usually) that newsgroups develop a kind-of "culture" of
their own, sometimes with strong use of emoticons (or
"smileys", eg :-)), and lots of in-joke
acronyms, such as IMHO (In My humble Opinion) and
ROTFL (Roll On The Floor Laughing). There's a
million of 'em.
Posting to a newsgroup is a different thing. Unless
you want to just "barge in" (and usually reveal yourself to be a
newbie, newsgroup slang for an incompetent beginner),
you'll do well to read one of the many guides to newsgroup
netiquette.
One of the best (written in a
highly "tongue-planted-firmly-in-cheek" style) is Brad Templeton's "Ask
Emily Postnews". Alternatively, there is at least one newsgroup entirely
devoted to stuff for new users:
news.newusers.questions.
Making sure you know the conventions for posting is
the best way to avoid being flamed, an entirely
unpleasant experience.
Most newsgroups also have a newsgroup FAQ (for
"Frequently Asked Questions"), usually posted monthly to the newsgroup
as an article, but often available on the Web as well. Before posting a
question to the newsgroup, you should always check the FAQ in case the
answer is there. The FAQ for the bagpipe newsgroup is on the Web at http://www.stanford.edu/~wrinnes/BagpipeFAQ/,
and also mirrored at http://www.kasslar.com/carl/Bagpipe_FAQ.htm.
The problem with FAQs is that they require constant upkeep and
maintenance to be useful and the bagpipe FAQ hasn't seen much of either lately.
Nevertheless, it's still worth consulting. There's actually a Web
repository of nearly every Internet FAQ, at
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/, and
another (less readable) one at
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/faqs/.
The way in which information propagates from news
server to news server is that a few times a
day, each news server contacts its neighbours and transfers any newly
posted articles to them. They, in turn, contact their neighbours, and
so on, articles gradually propagating through the entire newsgroups
system. The process can take days, in some cases, so don't expect that
everyone seeme -- sometimes as
short as a few days, sometimes several weeks. So it's quite common to
see lots of followups to an original article that has long since
expired.
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Web-based News Services
An interesting (relatively recent) development has been the emergence
of Web-based news readers, and newsgroup "search engines". The first,
and possibly most interesting, of these is that provided by DejaNews. Just about every
newsgroup article ever is archived here (how do they
do that?), and you can read newsgroups, and search
through thousands of old articles looking for that one obscure fact. An
amazing resource. A similar service is available at
remarq.com, also worth a look.
BTW: (newsgroup shorthand for "By The Way") -- don't confuse newsgroups
with so-called "chat rooms". These are an entirely different animal,
and would need an entire article of their own to discuss.
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Other Newsgroups
There are literally thousands of newsgroups. Here's a few I like to
have a peek into every so often. I've made these "clickable", meaning a
suitably-configured system should start up your newsreader if you click the
highlighted text.
rec.music.folk
rec.music.celtic
soc.culture.scottish (Excellent
FAQ located at http://www.siliconglen.com/scotfaq/)
soc.culture.celtic
rec.music.makers.guitar.acoustic
aus.cars
aus.sport.aussie-rules
aus.education
aus.jokes
rec.humor
rec.humor.funny
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Troubleshooting and Other Resources
It's possible that your ISP doesn't provide a news feed,
or that they don't "carry" the group you're interested in. There's
not much you can do about this, except (first) asking them politely to do
so, and (second, if they don't come to the party), changing ISPs.
Other Resoures
Most information about the newsgroups system is available from within
the newsgroups themselves, in FAQs and special purpose groups. Some Web
resources can be found at (for example)
http://au.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/Usenet/
There's also a Web page devoted to the
news.newsusers.questions at
http://www.geocities.com/nnqweb/.
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This (these?) Web pages are in an early stage of development as at April
2000. Check back regularly, as new information is being added all the
time.
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