Newsgroups at a glance
Usenet is the Internet's "bulletin board" and the largest communications forum in the history of the world. Newsgroup discussions are among the most fascinating and diverse sources of content on the Internet.  Newsgroups offer America Online members the unique opportunity to participate in discussions on a wide range of subjects with millions of people around the world.

Newsgroups are similar in concept to the message boards that you find throughout America Online.  The major difference is that -- since these newsgroups are distributed through the Internet -- you'll find many more topics (and millions of people!) in these globe-trotting discussions.

You'll notice that each newsgroup has a name. Names are words separated by dots (.). For instance, rec.arts.cooking or alt.internet.services. Using this scheme, newsgroups are (sort of) organized.  Recreational topics are "rec.", science are in "sci.", computer topics are in "comp." and so on. Usenet also has many, many "local" newsgroups intended for people who live in a certain geographic area. Although outsiders can sometimes read the messages there. For instance, fr. newsgroups are from France, and ba.newsgroups are from the San Francisco bay area.

What subjects are available in newsgroups? Just about any subject you can think of!  There are over 30,000 newsgroups.

Each newsgroup contains messages from the people who participate in them.  At the top of each message is the name of the author of the message, a subject, the date and time the message was posted, the name of the originating computer system (remember, most of these people won't be America Online members!), and the body of the message itself.  Some of the messages will be new, others will be responses to previous postings. The result is an ongoing "thread" of conversation that weaves its way over time.Usenet newsgroups are divided into broad categories, where sets of groups are organized by major topic: all computer-related discussion fell into the comp. hierarchy, recreational activities were put in the rec. hierarchy, and so on. There are over 300 different top-level newsgroup domains (domain is a fancy, but common, way of talking about the top level names for each group. Some are organized by topic (for example, comp. is the domain of the computer-related discussion groups,) many others are organized by the geographic areas that they serve (for instance, ba. newsgroups are about events in the California Bay Area.)

There are eight major Usenet domains: comp, misc, news, rec, soc, sci, talk, and alt. Each of these domains is organized into groups and subgroups according to topic.

*rec groups are oriented towards the arts, hobbies, and recreational activities. Examples are rec.arts.comics.strips, rec.arts.sf.starwars, rec.autos.antique, rec.radio.amateur.policy, and rec.sport.baseball.college.

*comp groups are topics in computer science and information on hardware and software systems. Groups are of interest to hobbyists as well as computer professionals. Examples are comp.apps.spreadsheets, comp.binaries.atari.st, comp.databases.object, and comp.lang.scheme.

*sci groups are discussions marked by special, and usually practical knowledge, relating to research in or application of the established sciences. Examples are sci.bio.technology, sci.physics.research, and sci.skeptic.

*soc groups address social issues and socializing. Examples are: soc.culture.african.american, soc.religion.quaker, and soc.rights.human.

*talk groups are largely debate-oriented and tend to feature long discussions without resolution and without appreciable amounts of generally useful information. For example: talk.politics.guns, talk.rape, and talk.rumors.

*news groups are concerned with Usenet news network and associated software. Examples are news.announce.newusers, news.software.readers, and news.groups.

*misc groups address themes that are not easily classified under any of the other headings or which incorporate themes from multiple categories. Examples are misc.jobs.offered, misc.invest, and misc.books.technical.

*alt groups are an anarchic alternative to mainstream Usenet groups. Although alt. stands for alternative, note that some of the best stuff on Usenet is part of the alt. hierarchy. (alt. groups are an alternative to the "big seven" news domains and not necessarily discussions of an alternative nature). Because the creation of alt. groups is less formal than standard groups, you are likely to find some funky topics here. Examples are alt.alien.visitors, alt.internet.services, alt.architecture.alternative, alt.banjo, and alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die

The alt. groups are the most anarchic arm of Usenet. Although some controls have been placed on the creation of new newsgroups in the "big seven" Usenet hierarchies, there are no such restrictions for alt. groups. In the interest of letting the Usenet sprawl and evolve without too many constraints, the alt. domain is the one space where newsgroups can be created without a consensus from the masses. The results of this are, predictably, some weird groups that sometimes have no discussion within and are attempts at humor, sarcasm, or something similar. If you've ever seen the Muppet Show you might remember Jim Henson's Swedish Chef who was often caught chopping madly and saying, "bork bork bork." Someone created a newsgroup called alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork--and somehow that hit a popular note on the Net. Now there are a variety of newsgroups in the alt. domain that have similar names. Examples: alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb, alt.american.automobile.breakdown.breakdown.breakdown, alt.american.olympians.choke.choke.choke, and so on.

Notice that no topics are off-limits here and people often create groups that are of interest for a few weeks, or days, and then vanish.

Another interesting space within the alt. domain is a set of groups that are for fans of specific individuals. The list of people is extensive and range from people such as Dan Quayle, Rush Limbaugh, Gene Scott, and Clarence Thomas; to authors such as Tom Robbins, Dave Barry, Douglas Adams, and Piers Anthony; to musicians and music groups such as Madonna, Run DMC, Spinal Tap, Wang Chung, Devo, and Laurie Anderson. If you like a person or group, chances are someone else does too!

There are other Usenet domains worth mentioning...

*biz groups are for business-related postings. Here you'll find company press releases, product information, and other commercial traffic. Examples are biz.comp.telebit.netblazer and biz.zeos.announce.

*k12 groups are carried at some sites. Their content is aimed at kindergarten, elementary, and secondary teachers, and students. Examples are k12.chat.elementary, k12.ed.art, and k12.ed.life-skills.

"Your Internet Consultant"
Copyright 1994 by Kevin Savetz
Used with permissionTo understand what Usenet is, you need some idea of how it works. First, there is no central Usenet authority -- all systems participating in the Usenet act like super copying machines, in that an article that you send to Usenet (this is commonly known as a posting) is saved on AOL's computer, and an exact duplicate is sent to a group of other machines that AOL's system "talks" to directly. Each of these machines keeps its copy and forwards duplicates to the machines that they talk with, and so on, until your words might well have been duplicated tens of thousands of times.

This system has pros and cons. On the plus side, reading newsgroups is fast since all the articles that you may want to read are already stored close by, on AOL's computer. But since postings need to propagate across Usenet, it can take several hours or days before your postings are seen by people on other systems... or before their messages can be read by you.

"Your Internet Consultant"
Copyright 1994 by Kevin Savetz
Used with permission.Thousands of newsgroups are local--where discussions are in and about specific geographic areas. These newsgroups are a great way to communicate with folks in your city, state, college, or country, but they're usually wholly uninteresting to everyone outside that area. There is at least one local newsgroup for every state and province in the U.S. and Canada plus thousands more for people in every county that's plugged into the Internet. Local groups allow New Yorkers to discuss the best restaurants in New York City, for example, but not waste disk space on a machine in Sao Paulo or Hong Kong.

The names of local newsgroups look just like global Usenet groups, except the first part is an initial for the location name. For example, atl groups are for Atlanta, Georgia, and ab groups are for Alberta, Canada. Here are some examples:
ab.general--Items of general interest in Alberta, Canada
ab.jobs--Jobs in Alberta, Canada
ab.politics--Discussion of politics in Alberta, Canada.
atl.general--Items of general interest in Atlanta, GA.
atl.jobs--Jobs in Atlanta, GA
atl.olympics--The Olympics in Atlanta, GA
atl.resumes--Resumes in Atlanta, GA

Other local newsgroups have different prefixes. For example:
aus--Australia
ba--San Francisco Bay Area
bc--British Columbia
bln--Berlin
boulder--Boulder, Colorado
brasil--Brazil
br--Britain
ca--California
cam--Cambridge, Massachusetts
dk--Denmark
hsv--Huntsville, Alabama
pnw--Pacific Northwest
ri--Rhode Island
tamu--Texas A&M University

To find local newsgroups in your area, go to keyword: Newsgroups then use the SEARCH function to search for groups with your city or state's name.

There are also organizational domains within colleges, companies, and network access firms. These can be recognized by the similarity between the domain name and the organizational name. Some examples: hp. are groups within Hewlett-Packard, apple. for Apple Computer, purdue. for Purdue University, ucb. for the University of California at Berkeley, netcom. for Netcom local newsgroups. You probably won't be able to access most of these--particularly the corporate ones that often are a hotbed for discussion of company internal information and projects.

"Your Internet Consultant"
Copyright 1994 by Kevin Savetz
Used with permission.I've seen lots of metaphors for Usenet, and one of the most colorful is that it's an information tsunami -- a massive wave of words that floods over your machine -- divided into thousands of little waves showing up in each newsgroup. It doesn't take long to realize that a system where anyone can post anything results in an unbelievable flood of information. If you're interested in a specific topic like reviews of current movies, the last thing you want to read are fifty articles that start out talking about the type of camera used to film a particular sequence and end up in an esoteric discussion of Japanese export tariffs. Yet not only can this happen, it very commonly does happen in newsgroups.

There are a variety of solutions, and one that has proven highly successful as the network has grown and expanded is to have a person or group of people act as newspaper editors, moderating the flow of information on the net, acting as moderators.

Groups that are designated as moderated have all articles posted by the moderator: postings from other people are sent to the central moderation site (which differs for each moderated newsgroup) and, if the article is approved and meets the guidelines of the group, it is posted by the moderator. I view it as analogous to a magazine editor: lots of articles may be submitted to the magazine, but only a subset of them are appropriate for the readership that is served by the group.

Many moderated newsgroups are reserved for very specific types of postings and consequently have a low volume of high quality information. Examples abound, including comp.sys.mac.announce for information of importance to Macintosh users, news.answers with answers to common questions about the Internet, Usenet, specific newsgroups, and other topics, and comp.internet.library with discussions of Internet access issues that relate to public or institutional libraries.

I would estimate that almost 25 percent of the Usenet groups I personally read are moderated, and they are the source of some of the most valuable information I find on the network. Which groups? Here are a few examples...

comp.internet.net-happenings--Announcements of notable happenings and new sites on the Internet
comp.sys.mac.announce--Macintosh-related announcements
comp.os.ms-windows.announce--Microsoft Windows-related announcements
rec.arts.movies.reviews--Just movie reviews, with discussion elsewhere

"Your Internet Consultant"
Copyright 1994 by Kevin Savetz
Used with permission.o begin reading newsgroups, go to keyword Newsgroups and click on the Read My Newsgroups icon.  You will then see a personal area where you can place the newsgroups that you are most interested in following.  (To add newsgroups, press the Add Newsgroups button from the main newsgroups screen.)

The first time you enter this area, you will see a list of about ten sample newsgroups.  We selected these newsgroups to give you a "feel" for how newsgroups work, and to show you the variety of topics that are covered by newsgroups.

You can read newsgroups from the following areas:

- Read My Newsgroups (your personal list of newsgroups that interest you)
- Add Newsgroups
- Latest Newsgroups

At the top of every newsgroup message, you will see "header" information that includes the name of the sender, the name of the originating computer system, and the date and time the message was posted.

At the end of many newsgroup messages, you will find that the author of the message has included a "signature" -- including such information as his or her name, address, organizational affiliation, and sometimes a personal quote.

Newsgroups generate a very large volume of messages.  Consider starting out by placing just a few newsgroups of interest in your personal newsgroup list.  You can always add or subtract newsgroups from the list as you go along.There are two ways to add a newsgroup to your list. The first is selecting a newsgroup from a list, and the second is using the Expert Add option.

Adding newsgroups from a list
To add to the initial list of newsgroups, click on the Add Newsgroups icon.  You will see a list of the main categories of newsgroups.  Highlight a category that interests you, and double-click.  (Or, highlight the category, then click on the List Topics button.)

Next, you will see a list of topics associated with the category you selected.  Highlight a topic and double-click.  When you do this, you will see a list of newsgroups related to the category and topic that you chose.

The next time you view your personal list by selecting the Read My Newsgroups icon, you'll find that the new newsgroup has been added.

Using Expert Add
Many thousands of newsgroups are available through the Internet, and more are being added all the time.  America Online has not "translated" and listed every newsgroup available in the listing located under the Add Newsgroups icon.  However, if you know the "Internet-style" name of a newsgroup you would like to add to your personal list, you can do so by using Expert Add.  (This feature is also useful for experts who may wish to bypass the hierarchy of category and topic listings in the Add Newsgroups area.)

To use this feature, click on the Expert Add icon.  You will be prompted to type in the Internet-style name of the newsgroup you are interested in (for example, "comp.graphics.animation"), and click on the Add button.  The newsgroup you requested will be added to your personal list.Each message posted to Usenet can reach millions of people scattered around the globe, so your words and actions (however insignificant they may seem) can affect lots of real people. All of the etiquette guidelines for sending electronic mail count doubly for Usenet postings. Use the following guidelines coupled with your own common sense when you post to Usenet.

Think about where your article is going. Your message may find its way to an audience of more than five million potential readers.

Make careful use of "quoted" material. If you reply to a posting without including some of the text you're referring to, it's very likely many of your readers won't know what you're talking about. But too many quoted lines preceding your own message will annoy people. So use quoting when you have to, but don't quote the entire text of a novel-length article. Especially if your only addition is "Me too!"

While we're on the subject, don't post messages of which the entire content is Me too! You probably have seen some of these: someone posts a message asking for a recipe for malted milk balls, then four or five people post Me too! Imagine what would happen if 100 or 10,000 people did the same thing. The Usenet would be both overloaded and a bore to read. If you really must have the information also, send an e-mail message to the original posters and ask them to pass along the information when they find it.

Refer to articles by their Message-ID and never by the article number. The article's number varies from computer to computer: #1502 on news.answers on AOL is almost certainly not the same message as #1502 on other systems.

Use a good subject line, just as with e-mail. Often, your subject line is the only thing that potential readers have as a gauge to decide whether they'll read your message. Postings with no subject or uninformative subject lines--such as READ THIS NOW!, Question, and Help needed--are likely to be ignored.

The Internet is laden with a variety of FAQs and other documents to help you avoid being a social misfit on the Usenet. Start with Rules for posting to Usenet, which is posted to news.announce.newusers and news.answers. This message describes some of the basic rules of conduct on Usenet.

If you're still thirsty for information, read Hints on writing style for Usenet and A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community, which are posted regularly to news.newusers.questions.

"Your Internet Consultant"
Copyright 1994 by Kevin Savetz
Used with permission.Sometimes you might want to post a test message to Usenet to make sure your news software is working or to see what the headers of your posts look like. By sending your message to several special test-ground newsgroups, you can try your posting software, see what your message looks like, and verify that your site actually propagates Usenet messages. Special newsgroups exist for test messages. You can send your test message to one of them with impunity. Don't post your message to alt.internet.services or alt.personals or talk.poitics.guns or ANYWHERE else that isn't just for test messages. Doing so will annoy thousands of folks who were minding their own business until your message came along and told them to ignore it because it's only a test.

You may safely post your test message to aol.test (also called simply "Test messages go here") or alt.test newsgroups. 

When you post a message to any newsgroup, it will start showing up on other sites within a few minutes or hours. If you post a your test message to alt.test, you will receive verification from some other Usenet sites when your message arrives! Out in the vast reaches of Usenet, some sites have set up programs, called autoresponders, that automatically send e-mail replies to messages posted to the alt.test newsgroup. The autoresponders are cool because: you get to see that your message is reaching other sites, and you get lots of e-mail from all over the world.

"Your Internet Consultant"
Copyright 1994 by Kevin Savetz
Used with permission.It's simple for a relatively sophisticated Internet user to actually create a Usenet newsgroup, but it is a much more complicated matter to have your newsgroup accepted by the Usenet community, allowed onto the millions of Internet hosts, and actually read.

Before you create a Usenet group or start a discussion about creating one, make sure that no such group already exists. With upward of 30,000 newsgroups out there, there's a very good chance there's already a place to talk about what you want to talk about.

If you think your newsgroup should exist as part of one of the standard Usenet hierarchies--comp, misc, news, rec, sci, soc, or talk--your task is more complicated and convoluted:

First, a Request For Discussion (RFD) on creation of a new newsgroup should be posted to news.announce.newgroups and also to any other groups or mailing lists that are related to the proposed topic. Follow-up discussion should take place on news.groups. During the discussion period, several things need to be ironed out, including the name and charter of the proposed group and whether it will be moderated or unmoderated. If it's to be moderated, who should the moderator be?

If there is no general agreement on these points among the proponents of a new group at the end of 30 days of discussion, the debate should be taken out of news.groups and sent into e-mail for further deliberation. Luckily, you're not defenseless in the world of newsgroup creation: group advocates seeking help in choosing a name to suit the proposed charter or looking for guidance in the creation procedure can send a message to group-advice@uunet.uu.net. A few seasoned news administrators there may assist you.

Once all the preceding has been agreed on, and it is determined that the new newsgroup is really desired, a call for votes should be posted to news.announce.newgroups and any other places where interested parties are likely to read. There are various procedures for taking votes, but the vote period should be from 21 to 31 days. The exact date that the voting period will end should be stated in the call for votes. Only votes e-mailed to the vote-taker count; votes posted to Usenet or mailing lists can't be counted.

At the end of the voting period, the vote taker must post the vote tally and the e-mail addresses of the voters to news.announce.newgroups and the newsgroups where the original call for votes was posted. After the vote result is posted, there is a five-day waiting period, during which the Net has a chance to correct any major errors or raise serious objections.

After the waiting period, and if at least two-thirds of the total number of valid votes are in favor of creation and there are 100 more "yes" votes than "no" votes, the newsgroup may be created. If the 100-vote margin or two-thirds percentage is not met, the group should not be created and the topic should not be brought up for discussion for at least six months.

Whew! That was the condensed version. For the full story, read How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup, a document that will tell you everything you wanted to know (and more) about creating a new newsgroup.

Do you really want to go through the trouble of creating a new newsgroup? Maybe. Creating a newsgroup takes time and patience. It will take from two to three months of your time from the beginning of the initial discussion period to the final tally of the Call for Votes. In that time, you'll have to devise a way to collect and count the votes and endure the endless bickering of highly opinionated people on news.groups.

If you're faint-of-heart or don't think there is enough interest in your idea for a Usenet group, consider creating a mailing list. Mailing lists can be set up quickly and work well with small readerships. For information on setting up a mailing list, go to keyword: MailingLists and read the article called Hosting a Mailing List.

"Your Internet Consultant"
Copyright 1994 by Kevin Savetz
Used with permission.If you're want to talk to other people on the Internet about the things that are important to you--whether it be politics, pets, or poets--AOL's Newsgroup Scoop is a must-read.

Newsgroup Scoop reviews three different Internet discussion groups (called newsgroups or Usenet newsgroups) and tells you what they're about. Instead of wading through the 25,000+ newsgroups AOL has available, you can look here for the stuff that interests you and then go on to the newsgroup.

The Scoop reviews newsgroups on four criteria: Content, Traffic, Heat Index, and Camp Value.

Content: If the posts are useful or at least entertaining, without a lot of drivel, the content value is high.

Traffic: How many posts hit the group per day? Twenty a day is moderate. Four hundred a day is insanity.

Heat Index: Are people easily ticked off and nasty? Do the flame wars drag on and on? Give me an idea of just how spiteful it gets.

Camp Value: Are the people and/or contents of the group completely outrageous? Have the extreme personalities in the group forced you to redefine your world-view? If so, camp value is right up there.Besides AOL's "search newsgroups" function, the Web offers a variety of tools for searching for newsgroups of interest.

The Cyberfiber Newsgroups Directory (http://www.cyberfiber.com/news/) is a directory of Usenet groups by topic - anything from Animals and Pets to Public Affairs to Transportation and Travel, and lots of stuff in-between.  This is a good alternative way to search for a newsgroup you might want to join, especially if you have an area of general interest rather than a specific topic.

Two other ways of searching the available newsgroups are: 

Internet Newsgroups (http://www.w3.org/pub/DataSources/News/Groups/Overview.html) which lists the Newsgroups by hierarchy (eg. alt, biz, rec, sci, etc.).

Anchorman (http://www.ph.tn.tudelft.nl/People/pierre/anchorman/Amn.html) organizes the list in a similar fashion, but also gives you the number of groups in each category and appears to be more currently updated.

(Thanks to CJ Purple for the site descriptions.)Many, many people use Usenet for buying and selling everything from their used computer to a vacation house on the lake.  If you are interested in exploring this method of doing business, check out the Usenet Marketplace FAQ, which is a how-to for all the misc.forsale and biz.marketplace newsgroups.  Point your browser to http://www.phoenix.net/~lilden/FAQ.  I think you'll find familiarizing yourself with how the system works before you try to buy or sell on the Internet will yield you better results in the long run. 

(Thanks to CJ Purple for the site descriptions.)Usenet Info Center Launch Pad at http://sunsite.unc.edu/usenet-i/.  From here you can get help with Usenet, browse the available Usenet groups, search for a particular Usenet group, access the FAQs of the various newsgroups, and access DejaNews.  (FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions and most newsgroups publish a FAQ document that explains the rules and etiquette for posting to that group.  If you don't want to get flamed or are determined to change the poor image of the typical AOL user that many Usenet users have, these FAQs are really important to read.  DejaNews is a search service that allows you to search the all available Newsgroups for postings on a particular topic or by a particular author.)

(Thanks to CJ Purple for the site descriptions.)InReference
http://www.reference.com/InReference is another favorite Net agent, and a powerful one at that. You can use it to search for postings on Usenet and mailing lists based on subject, keyword, date, author and other criteria. Useful, but the cool part that makes it an agent is the fact that it can do your search on a scheduled basis and e-mail the results to you.

For instance, I use InReference to keep tabs on gossip about my favorite musical groups. Whenever anyone on Usenet mentions Negativland or They Might Be Giants, InReference takes notice. Once a week (more often if I wanted,) it e-mails abstracts describing the relevant messages. From there I can get the full messages if I want.

InReference is a great way to keep track of subjects that interest you on Usenet without having to sort through the morass of other stuff there. Agent technology at its best.