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Chapter 3: USENET I
3.1 THE GLOBAL WATERING HOLE
Imagine a conversation carried out over a period of hours and days,
as if people were leaving messages and responses on a bulletin board. Or
imagine the electronic equivalent of a radio talk show where everybody
can put their two cents in and no one is ever on hold.
Unlike e-mail, which is "one-to-one," Usenet is "many-to-many."
Usenet is the international meeting place, where people gather to meet
their friends, discuss the day's events, keep up with computer trends or
talk about whatever's on their mind. Jumping into a Usenet discussion
can be a liberating experience. Nobody knows what you look or sound
like, how old you are, what your background is. You're judged solely on
your words, your ability to make a point.
To many people, Usenet IS the Net. In fact, it is often confused
with Internet. But it is a totally separate system. All Internet sites
CAN carry Usenet, but so do many non-Internet sites, from sophisticated
Unix machines to old XT clones and Apple IIs.
Technically, Usenet messages are shipped around the world, from
host system to host system, using one of several specific Net
protocols. Your host system stores all of its Usenet messages in one
place, which everybody with an account on the system can access. That
way, no matter how many people actually read a given message, each
host system has to store only one copy of it. Many host systems "talk"
with several others regularly in case one or another of their links goes
down for some reason. When two host systems connect, they basically
compare notes on which Usenet messages they already have. Any that one
is missing the other then transmits, and vice-versa. Because they are
computers, they don't mind running through thousands, even millions, of
these comparisons every day.
Yes, millions. For Usenet is huge. Every day, Usenet users
pump upwards of 40 million characters a day into the system -- roughly
the equivalent of volumes A-G of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Obviously, nobody could possibly keep up with this immense flow of
messages. Let's look at how to find conferences and discussions of
interest to you.
The basic building block of Usenet is the newsgroup, which is a
collection of messages with a related theme (on other networks, these
would be called conferences, forums, bboards or special-interest
groups). There are now more than 5,000 of these newsgroups, in several
diferent languages, covering everything from art to zoology, from
science fiction to South Africa.
Some public-access systems, typically the ones that work through
menus, try to make it easier by dividing Usenet into several broad
categories. Choose one of those and you're given a list of newsgroups in
that category. Then select the newsgroup you're interested in and start
reading.
Other systems let you compile your own "reading list" so that you
only see messages in conferences you want. In both cases, conferences
are arranged in a particular hierarchy devised in the early 1980s.
Newsgroup names start with one of a series of broad topic names. For
example, newsgroups beginning with "comp." are about particular computer-
related topics. These broad topics are followed by a series of more
focused topics (so that "comp.unix" groups are limited to discussion
about Unix). The main hierarchies are:
bionet Research biology
bit.listserv Conferences originating as Bitnet mailing lists
biz Business
comp Computers and related subjects
misc Discussions that don't fit anywhere else
news News about Usenet itself
rec Hobbies, games and recreation
sci Science other than research biology
soc "Social" groups, often ethnically related
talk Politics and related topics
alt Controversial or unusual topics; not
carried by all sites
In addition, many host systems carry newsgroups for a particular
city, state or region. For example, ne.housing is a newsgroup where
New Englanders look for apartments. A growing number also carry K12
newsgroups, which are aimed at elementary and secondary teachers and
students. And a number of sites carry clari newsgroups, which is
actually a commercial service consisting of wire-service stories and
a unique online computer news service (more on this in chapter 10).
3.2 NAVIGATING USENET WITH nn
How do you dive right in? As mentioned, on some systems, it's all
done through menus -- you just keep choosing from a list of choices until
you get to the newsgroup you want and then hit the "read" command. On
Unix systems, however, you will have to use a "newsreader" program. Two
of the more common ones are known as rn (for "read news") and nn (for "no
news" -- because it's supposed to be simpler to use).
For beginners, nn may be the better choice because it works with
menus -- you get a list of articles in a given newsgroup and then you
choose which ones you want to see. To try it out, connect to your host
system and, at the command line, type
nn news.announce.newusers
and hit enter. After a few seconds, you should see something like
this:
Newsgroup: news.announce.newusers Articles: 22 of 22/1 NEW
a Gene Spafford 776 Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
b Gene Spafford 362 A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community
c Gene Spafford 387 Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
d Gene Spafford 101 Hints on writing style for Usenet
e Gene Spafford 74 Introduction to news.announce
f Gene Spafford 367 USENET Software: History and Sources
g Gene Spafford 353 What is Usenet?
h taylor 241 A Guide to Social Newsgroups and Mailing Lists
i Gene Spafford 585 Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part I
j Gene Spafford 455 >Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part II
k David C Lawrenc 151 How to Create a New Newsgroup
l Gene Spafford 106 How to Get Information about Networks
m Gene Spafford 888 List of Active Newsgroups
n Gene Spafford 504 List of Moderators
o Gene Spafford 1051 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part I
p Gene Spafford 1123 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part II
q Gene Spafford 1193 >Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part III
r Jonathan Kamens 644 How to become a USENET site
s Jonathan Kamen 1344 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part I
-- 15:52 -- SELECT -- help:? -----Top 85%-----
Explanatory postings for new users. (Moderated)
Obviously, this is a good newsgroup to begin your exploration of
Usenet! Here's what all this means: The first letter on each line is
the letter you type to read that particular "article" (it makes sense
that a "newsgroup" would have "articles"). Next comes the name of the
person who wrote that article, followed by its length, in lines, and
what the article is about. At the bottom, you see the local time at your
access site, what you're doing right now (i.e., SELECTing articles),
which key to hit for some help (the ? key) and how many of the articles
in the newsgroup you can see on this screen. The "(moderated)" means the
newsgroup has a "moderator" who is the only one who can directly post
messages to it. This is generally limited to groups such as this, which
contain articles of basic information or for digests, which are
basically online magazines (more on them in a bit).
Say you're particularly interested in what "Emily Postnews" has to
say about proper etiquette on Usenet. Hit your c key (lower case!), and
the line will light up. If you want to read something else, hit the key
that corresponds to it. And if you want to see what's on the next page
of articles, hit return or your space bar.
But you're impatient to get going, and you want to read that
article now. The command for that in nn is a capital Z. Hit it and
you'll see something like this:
Gene Spafford: Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on NetiquetteSep 92 04:17
Original-author: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Archive-name: emily-postnews/part1
Last-change: 30 Nov 91 by brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
**NOTE: this is intended to be satirical. If you do not recognize
it as such, consult a doctor or professional comedian. The
recommendations in this article should recognized for what
they are -- admonitions about what NOT to do.
"Dear Emily Postnews"
Emily Postnews, foremost authority on proper net behaviour,
gives her advice on how to act on the net.
============================================================================
Dear Miss Postnews: How long should my signature be? -- verbose@noisy
A: Dear Verbose: Please try and make your signature as long as you
-- 09:57 --.announce.newusers-- LAST --help:?--Top 4%--
The first few lines are the message's header, similar to the header
you get in e-mail messages. Then comes the beginning of the message.
The last line tells you the time again, the newsgroup name (or part of
it, anyway), the position in your message stack that this message
occupies, how to get help, and how much of the message is on screen. If
you want to keep reading this message, just hit your space bar (not your
enter key!) for the next screen and so on until done. When done, you'll
be returned to the newsgroup menu. For now hit Q (upper case this time),
which quits you out of nn and returns you to your host system's command
line.
To get a look at another interesting newsgroup, type
nn comp.risks
and hit enter. This newsgroup is another moderated group, this time a
digest of all the funny and frightening ways computers and the people
who run and use them can go wrong. Again, you read articles by
selecting their letters. If you're in the middle of an article and
decide you want to go onto the next one, hit your n key.
Now it's time to look for some newsgroups that might be of
particular interest to you. Unix host systems that have nn use a program
called nngrep (ever get the feeling Unix was not entirely written in
English?) that lets you scan newsgroups. Exit nn and at your host
system's command line, type
nngrep word
where word is the subject you're interested in. If you use a Macintosh
computer, you might try
nngrep mac
You'll get something that looks like this:
alt.music.machines.of.loving.grace
alt.religion.emacs
comp.binaries.mac
comp.emacs
comp.lang.forth.mac
comp.os.mach
comp.sources.mac
comp.sys.mac.announce
comp.sys.mac.apps
comp.sys.mac.comm
comp.sys.mac.databases
comp.sys.mac.digest
comp.sys.mac.games
comp.sys.mac.hardware
comp.sys.mac.hypercard
comp.sys.mac.misc
comp.sys.mac.programmer
comp.sys.mac.system
comp.sys.mac.wanted
gnu.emacs.announce
gnu.emacs.bug
gnu.emacs.gnews
gnu.emacs.gnus
gnu.emacs.help
gnu.emacs.lisp.manual
gnu.emacs.sources
gnu.emacs.vm.bug
gnu.emacs.vm.info
gnu.emacs.vms
Note that some of these obviously have something to do with
Macintoshes while some obviously do not; nngrep is not a perfect system.
If you want to get a list of ALL the newsgroups available on your host
system, type
nngrep -a |more
or
nngrep -a |pg
and hit enter (which one to use depends on the Unix used on your host
system; if one doesn't do anything, try the other). You don't
absolutely need the |more or |pg, but if you don't include it, the list
will keep scrolling, rather than pausing every 24 lines. If you are in
nn, hitting a capital Y will bring up a similar list.
Typing "nn newsgroup" for every newsgroup can get awfully tiring
after awhile. When you use nn, your host system looks in a file called
.newsrc. This is basically a list of every newsgroup on the host system
along with notations on which groups and articles you have read (all
maintained by the computer). You can also use this file to create a
"reading list" that brings up each newsgroup to which you want to
"subscribe." To try it out, type
nn
without any newsgroup name, and hit enter.
Unfortunately, you will start out with a .newsrc file that has you
"subscribed" to every single newsgroup on your host system! To delete
a newsgroup from your reading list, type a capital U while its menu is
on the screen. The computer will ask you if you're sure you want to
"unsubscribe." If you then hit a Y, you'll be unsubscribed and put in
the next group.
With many host systems carrying thousands of newsgroups, this will
take you forever.
Fortunately, there are a couple of easier ways to do this. Both
involve calling up your .newsrc file in a word or text processor. In a
.newsrc file, each newsgroup takes up one line, consisting of the
group's name, an exclamation point or a colon and a range of numbers.
Newsgroups with a colon are ones to which you are subscribed; those
followed by an exclamation point are "un-subscribed." To start with a
clean slate, then, you have to change all those colons to exclamation
points.
If you know how to use emacs or vi, call up the .newsrc file (you
might want to make a copy of .newsrc first, just in case), and use the
search-and-replace function to make the change.
If you're not comfortable with these text processor, you can
download the .newsrc file, make the changes on your own computer and
then upload the revised file. Before you download the file, however,
you should do a couple of things. One is to type
cp .newsrc temprc
and hit enter. You will actually download this temprc file (note the
name does not start with a period -- some computers, such as those using
MS-DOS, do not allow file names starting with periods). After you
download the file, open it in your favorite word processor and use its
search-and-replace function to change the exclamation points to colons.
Be careful not to change anything else! Save the document in ASCII or
text format. Dial back into your host system. At the command line,
type
cp temprc temprc1
and hit enter. This new file will serve as your backup .newsrc file
just in case something goes wrong. Upload the temprc file from your
computer. This will overwrite the Unix system's old temprc file. Now
type
cp temprc .newsrc
and hit enter. You now have a clean slate to start creating a reading
list.
3.3 nn COMMANDS
To mark a specific article for reading, type the letter next to it (in lower
case). To mark a specific article and all of its responses, type the letter
and an asterisk, for example:
a*
To un-select an article, type the letter next to it (again, in lower case).
C Cancels an article (around the world) that you wrote.
Every article posted on Usenet has a unique ID number.
Hitting a capital C sends out a new message that tells host
systems that receive it to find earlier message and delete
it.
F To post a public response, or follow-up. If selected while
still on a newsgroup "page", asks you which article to
follow up. If selected while in a specific article, will
follow up that article. In either case, you'll be asked if
you want to include the original article in yours. Caution:
puts you in whatever text editor is your default.
N Goes to the next subscribed newsgroup with unread articles.
P Goes to the previous subscribed newsgroup with unread
articles.
G news.group Goes to a specific newsgroup. Can be used to subscribe to
new newsgroups. Hitting G brings up a sub-menu:
u Goes to the group and shows only un-read
articles.
a Goes to the group and shows all articles,
even ones you've already read.
s Will show you only articles with a specific
subject.
n Will show you only articles from a specific
person.
M Mails a copy of the current article to somebody. You'll be
asked for the recipient's e-mail address and whether you
want to add any comments to the article before sending it
off. As with F, puts you in the default editor.
:post Post an article. You'll be asked for the name of the group.
Q Quit, or exit, nn.
U Un-subscribe from the current newsgroup.
R Responds to an article via e-mail.
space Hitting the space bar brings up the next page of articles.
X If you have selected articles, this will show them to you
and then take you to the next subscribed newsgroup with
unread articles. If you don't have any selected articles,
it marks all articles as read and takes you to the next
unread subscribed newsgroup.
=word Finds and marks all articles in the newsgroup with a
specific word in the "subject:" line, for example:
=modem
Z Shows you selected articles immediately and then returns
you to the current newsgroup.
? Brings up a help screen.
< Goes to the previous page in the newsgroup.
> Goes to the next page in the newsgroup.
$ Goes to the last page in an article.
^ Goes to the first page in an article.
3.4 USING rn
Some folks prefer this older newsreader.
If you type
rn news.announce.newusers
at your host system's command line, you'll see something like this:
******** 21 unread articles in news.announce.newusers--read now? [ynq]
If you hit your Y key, the first article will appear on your screen. If
you want to see what articles are available first, though, hit your
computer's = key and you'll get something like this:
152 Introduction to news.announce
153 A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community
154 What is Usenet?
155 Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
156 Hints on writing style for Usenet
158 Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part I
159 Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part II
160 Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
161 USENET Software: History and Sources
162 A Guide to Social Newsgroups and Mailing Lists
163 How to Get Information about Networks
164 How to Create a New Newsgroup
169 List of Active Newsgroups
170 List of Moderators
171 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part I
172 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part II
173 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part III
174 How to become a USENET site
175 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part I
176 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part II
177 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part III
End of article 158 (of 178)--what next? [npq]
Notice how the messages are in numerical order this time, and don't
tell you who sent them. Article 154 looks interesting. To read it,
type in 154 and hit enter. You'll see something like this:
Article 154 (20 more) in news.announce.newusers (moderated):
From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.admin,news.answers
Subject: What is Usenet?
Date: 20 Sep 92 04:17:26 GMT
Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Lines: 353
Supersedes: <spaf-whatis_715578719@cs.purdue.edu>
Archive-name: what-is-usenet/part1
Original from: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg)
Last-change: 19 July 1992 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it is widely
misunderstood. Every day on Usenet, the "blind men and the elephant"
phenomenon is evident, in spades. In my opinion, more flame wars
arise because of a lack of understanding of the nature of Usenet than
from any other source. And consider that such flame wars arise, of
necessity, among people who are on Usenet. Imagine, then, how poorly
understood Usenet must be by those outside!
--MORE--(7%)
This time, the header looks much more like the gobbledygook you get
in e-mail messages. To keep reading, hit your space bar. If you hit
your n key (lower case), you'll go to the next message in the
numerical order.
To escape rn, just keep hitting your q key (in lower case), until
you get back to the command line. Now let's set up your reading list.
Because rn uses the same .newsrc file as nn, you can use one of the
search-and-replace methods described above. Or you can do this: Type
rn
and hit enter. When the first newsgroup comes up on your screen, hit
your u key (in lower case). Hit it again, and again, and again. Or
just keep it pressed down (if your computer starts beeping, let up for a
couple of seconds). Eventually, you'll be told you're at the end of the
newsgroups, and asked what you want to do next.
Here's where you begin entering newsgroups. Type
g newsgroup
(for example, g comp.sys.mac.announce) and hit enter. You'll be asked
if you want to "subscribe." Hit your y key. Then type
g next newsgroup
(for example, g comp.announce.newusers) and hit enter. Repeat until
done. This process will also set up your reading list for nn, if you
prefer that newsreader. But how do you know which newsgroups to
subscribe? Typing a lower-case l and then hitting enter will show you a
list of all available newsgroups. Again, since there could be more than
2,000 newsgroups on your system, this might not be something you want to
do. Fortunately, you can search for groups with particular words in
their names, using the l command. Typing
l mac
followed by enter, will bring up a list of newsgroups with those letters
in them (and as in nn, you will also see groups dealing with emacs and
the like, in addition to groups related to Macintosh computers).
Because of the vast amount of messages transmitted over Usenet,
most systems carry messages for only a few days or weeks. So if there's
a message you want to keep, you should either turn on your computer's
screen capture or save it to a file which you can later download). To
save a message as a file in rn, type
s filename
where filename is what you want to call the file. Hit enter. You'll be
asked if you want to save it in "mailbox format." In most cases, you
can answer with an n (which will strip off the header). The message
will now be saved to a file in your News directory (which you can access
by typing cd News and then hitting enter).
Also, some newsgroups fill up particularly quickly -- go away for a
couple of days and you'll come back to find hundreds of articles! One
way to deal with that is to mark them as "read" so that they no longer
appear on your screen. In nn, hit a capital J; in rn, a small c.
3.5 rn COMMANDS
Different commands are available to you in rn depending on whether you
are already in a newsgroup or reading a specific article. At any point,
typing a lower-case H will bring up a list of available commands and some
terse instructions for using them. Here are some of them:
After you've just called up rn, or within a newsgroup:
c Marks every article in a newsgroup as read (or "caught up")
so that you don't have to see them again. The system will ask
you if you are sure. Can be done either when asked if you
want to read a particular newsgroup or once in the newsgroup.
g Goes to a newsgroup, in this form:
g news.group
Use this both for going to groups to which you're already
subscribed and subscribing to new groups.
h Provides a list of available commands with terse
instructions.
l Gives a list of all available newsgroups.
p Goes to the first previous subscribed newsgroup with un-read
articles.
q Quits, or exits, rn if you have not yet gone into a newsgroup.
If you are in a newsgroup, it quits that one and brings you to
the next subscribed newsgroup.
Only within a newsgroup:
= Gives a list of all available articles in the newsgroup.
m Marks a specific article or series of articles as "un-read"
again so that you can come back to them later. Typing
1700m
and hitting enter would mark just that article as un-read.
Typing
1700-1800m
and hitting enter would mark all of those articles as un-
read.
space Brings up the next page of article listings. If already on
the last page, displays the first article in the newsgroup.
u Un-subscribe from the newsgroup.
/text/ Searches through the newsgroup for articles with a specific
word or phrase in the "subject:" line, from the current
article to the end of the newsgroup. For example,
/EFF/
would bring you to the first article with "EFF" in the
"subject:" line.
?text? The same as above except it searches in reverse order from
the current article.
Only within a specific article:
e Some newsgroups consist of articles that are binary files,
typically programs or graphics images. Hitting e will convert
the ASCII characters within such an article into a file you
can then download and use or view (assuming you have the proper
computer and software). Many times, such files will be split
into several articles; just keep calling up the articles and
hitting e until done. You'll find the resulting file in your
News subdirectory.
C If you post an article and then decide it was a mistake, call
it up on your host system and hit this. The message will soon
begin disappearing on systems around the world.
F Post a public response in the newsgroup to the current
article. Includes a copy of her posting, which you can then
edit down using your host system's text editor.
f The same as above except it does not include a copy of the
original message in yours.
m Marks the current article as "un-read" so that you can come
back to it later. You do not have to type the article
number.
Control-N Brings up the first response to the article. If there is no
follow-up article, this returns you to the first unread article
in the newsgroup).
Control-P Goes to the message to which the current article is a reply.
n Goes to the next unread article in the newsgroup.
N Takes you to the next article in the newsgroup even if you've
already read it.
q Quits, or exits, the current article. Leaves you in the current
newsgroup.
R Reply, via e-mail only, to the author of the current article.
Includes a copy of his message in yours.
r The same as above, except it does not include a copy of his
article.
s file Copies the current article to a file in your News directory,
where "file" is the name of the file you want to save it to.
You'll be asked if you want to use "mailbox" format when
saving. If you answer by hitting your N key, most of the
header will not be saved.
s|mail user Mails a copy of the article to somebody. For "user" substitute
her e-mail address. Does not let you add comments to the
message first, however.
space Hitting the space bar shows the next page of the article, or, if
at the end, goes to the next un-read article.
3.6 ESSENTIAL NEWSGROUPS
With so much to choose from, everybody will likely have their own
unique Usenet reading list. But there are a few newsgroups that are
particularly of interest to newcomers. Among them:
news.announce.newusers This group consists of a series of
articles that explain various facets of
Usenet.
news.newusers.questions This is where you can ask questions
(we'll see how in a bit) about how
Usenet works.
news.announce.newsgroups Look here for information about new or
proposed newsgroups.
news.answers Contains lists of "Frequently Asked
Questions" (FAQs) and their answers from
many different newsgroups. Learn how to
fight jet lag in the FAQ from
rec.travel.air; look up answers to common
questions about Microsoft Windows in
an FAQ from comp.os.ms-windows; etc.
alt.internet.services Looking for something in particular on
the Internet? Ask here.
alt.infosystems.announce People adding new information services to
the Internet will post details here.
3.7 SPEAKING UP
"Threads" are an integral part of Usenet. When somebody posts a
message, often somebody else will respond. Soon, a thread of
conversation begins. Following these threads is relatively easy. In
nn, related messages are grouped together. In rn, when you're done
with a message, you can hit control-N to read the next related
message, or followup. As you explore Usenet, it's probably a good
idea to read discussions for awhile before you jump in. This way, you
can get a feel for the particular newsgroup -- each of which has its
own rhythms.
Eventually, though, you'll want to speak up. There are two main
ways to do this. You join an existing conversation, or you can start
a whole new thread.
If you want to join a discussion, you have to decide if you want
to include portions of the message you are responding to in your
message. The reason to do this is so people can see what you're
responding to, just in case the original message has disappeared from
their system (remember that most Usenet messages have a short life span
on the average host system) or they can't find it.
If you're using a Unix host system, joining an existing
conversation is similar in both nn and rn: hit your F key when done
with a given article in the thread. In rn, type a small f if you
don't want to include portions of the message you're responding to; an
upper-case F if you do. In nn, type a capital F. You'll then be asked
if you want to include portions of the original message.
And here's where you hit another Unix wall. When you hit your F
key, your host system calls up its basic Unix text editor. If you're
lucky, that'll be Pico, a very easy system. More likely, however,
you'll get dumped into emacs (or possibly vi), which you've already met
in the chapter on e-mail.
The single most important emacs command is
control-x control-c
This means, depress your control key and hit x. Then depress the
control key and hit c. Memorize this. In fact, it's so important, it
bears repeating:
control-x control-c
These keystrokes are how you get out of emacs. If it works well,
you'll be asked if you want to send, edit, abort or list the message you
were working on. If it doesn't work well (say you accidentally hit some
other weird key combination that means something special to emacs) and
nothing seems to happen, or you just get more weird-looking emacs
prompts on the bottom of your screen, try hitting control-g. This should
stop whatever emacs was trying to do (you should see the word "quit" on
the bottom of your screen), after which you can hit control-x control-c.
But if this still doesn't work, remember that you can always disconnect
and dial back in!
If you have told your newsreader you do want to include portions
of the original message in yours, it will automatically put the entire
thing at the top of your message. Use the arrow keys to move down to
the lines you want to delete and hit control-K, which will delete one
line at a time.
You can then write your message. Remember that you have to hit
enter before your cursor gets to the end of the line, because emacs
does not have word wrapping.
When done, hit control-x control-c. You'll be asked the
question about sending, editing, aborting, etc. Chose one. If you
hit Y, your host system will start the process to sending your
message across the Net.
The nn and rn programs work differently when it comes to posting
entirely new messages. In nn, type
:post
and hit enter in any newsgroup. You'll be asked which newsgroup to
post a message to. Type in its name and hit enter. Then you'll be
asked for "keywords." These are words you'd use to attract somebody
scanning a newsgroup. Say you're selling your car. You might type
the type of car here. Next comes a "summary" line, which is somewhat
similar. Finally, you'll be asked for the message's "distribution."
This is where you put how widely you want your message disseminated.
Think about this one for a second. If you are selling your car, it
makes little sense to send a message about it all over the world. But
if you want to talk about the environment, it might make a lot of
sense. Each host system has its own set of distribution
classifications, but there's generally a local one (just for users of
that system), one for the city, state or region it's in, another for
the country (for example, usa), one for the continent (for Americans
and Canadians, na) and finally, one for the entire world (usually:
world).
Which one to use? Generally, a couple of seconds' thought will
help you decide. If you're selling your car, use your city or regional
distribution -- people in Australia won't much care and may even get
annoyed. If you want to discuss presidential politics, using a USA
distribution makes more sense. If you want to talk about events in the
Middle East, sending your message to the entire world is perfectly
acceptable.
Then you can type your message. If you've composed your message
offline (generally a good idea if you and emacs don't get along), you
can upload it now. You may see a lot of weird looking characters as
it uploads into emacs, but those will disappear when you hit control-X
and then control-C. Alternately: "save" the message (for example, by
hitting m in rn), log out, compose your message offline, log back on and
upload your message into a file on your host system. Then call up
Usenet, find the article you "saved." Start a reply, and you'll be asked
if you want to include a prepared message. Type in the name of the file
you just created and hit enter.
In rn, you have to wait until you get to the end of a newsgroup
to hit F, which will bring up a message-composing system.
Alternately, at your host system's command line, you can type
Pnews
and hit enter. You'll be prompted somewhat similarly to the nn
system, except that you'll be given a list of possible distributions.
If you chose "world," you'll get this message:
This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire
civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of
dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what you are doing.
Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny]
Don't worry -- your message won't really cost the Net untold
amounts, although, again, it's a good idea to think for a second
whether your message really should go everywhere.
If you want to respond to a given post through e-mail, instead of
publicly, hit R in nn or r or R in rn. In rn, as with follow-up
articles, the upper-case key includes the original message in yours.
Most newsgroups are unmoderated, which means that every message
you post will eventually wind up on every host system within the
geographic region you specified that carries that newsgroup.
Some newsgroups, however, are moderated, as you saw earlier with
comp.risks. In these groups, messages are shipped to a single
location where a moderator, acting much like a magazine editor,
decides what actually gets posted. In some cases, groups are
moderated like scholarly journals. In other cases, it's to try to cut
down on the massive number of messages that might otherwise be posted.
You'll notice that many articles in Usenet end with a fancy
"signature" that often contains some witty saying, a clever drawing
and, almost incidentally, the poster's name and e-mail address. You
too can have your own "signature" automatically appended to everything
you post. On your own computer, create a signature file. Try to keep
it to four lines or less, lest you annoy others on the Net. Then,
while connected to your host system, type
cat>.signature
and hit enter (note the period before the s). Upload your signature
file into this using your communications software's ASCII upload
protocol. When done, hit control-D, the Unix command for closing a
file. Now, every time you post a message, this will be appended to it.
There are a few caveats to posting. Usenet is no different from
a Town Meeting or publication: you're not supposed to break the law,
whether that's posting copyrighted material or engaging in illegal
activities. It is also not a place to try to sell products (except in
certain biz. and for-sale newsgroups).
3.8 CROSS-POSTING
Sometimes, you'll have an issue you think should be discussed in
more than one Usenet newsgroup. Rather than posting individual messages
in each group, you can post the same message in several groups at once,
through a process known as cross-posting.
Say you want to start a discussion about the political
ramifications of importing rare tropical fish from Brazil. People who
read rec.aquaria might have something to say. So might people who read
alt.politics.animals and talk.politics.misc.
Cross-posting is easy. It also should mean that people on other
systems who subscribe to several newsgroups will see your message only
once, rather than several times -- news-reading software can cancel out
the other copies once a person has read the message. When you get ready
to post a message (whether through Pnews for rn or the :post command in
nn), you'll be asked in which newsgroups. Type the names of the various
groups, separated by a comma, but no space, for example:
rec.aquaria,alt.politics.animals,talk.politics.misc
and hit enter. After answering the other questions (geographic
distribution, etc.), the message will be posted in the various
groups (unless one of the groups is moderated, in which case the
message goes to the moderator, who decides whether to make it public).
It's considered bad form to post to an excessive number of
newsgroups, or inappropriate newsgroups. Chances are, you don't really
have to post something in 20 different places. And while you may think
your particular political issue is vitally important to the fate of the
world, chances are the readers of rec.arts.comics will not, or at least
not important enough to impose on them. You'll get a lot of nasty e-
mail messages demanding you restrict your messages to the "appropriate"
newsgroups.
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