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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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