Usenet is a collection of newsgroups, which works very similar to a collection of bulletin boards. These bulletin boards are shared by many people and are a growing collection of responses. Generally the discussion begins with a topic and then is added to by multiple individuals The continuation of posts centering on the same subject is referred to as a thread.
Usenet Conduct
There is a level of expected conduct within Usenet. It is important to understand
the expectations of the content within each newsgroup. Every newsgroup has
a name, which gives an indication about the kind of discussion the group is
for. Some newsgroups also have a ‘charter’, which explicitly states
the reasons for the groups existence and the type of postings expected.
Most newsgroups also have a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's). This is a list of questions that are often asked in a particular group. Instead of newcomers to the group continually asking the same questions, users are advised to read the FAQ before posting anything to the newsgroup. Posting a frequently asked question, which has been asked many times before, will not gain you any popularity within a newsgroup.
Newcomers to a group are also advised to lurk, that is to read messages posted to the group for a few days, in order to get an understanding for the group.
Commercial advertisements, often called spam, unsolicited advertisements are often not welcome in a newsgroup. Before posting any kind of commercial advertisement, make sure you read the FAQ for the group thoroughly to see if you really should post.
In order to ensure only on-topic postings are included, some newsgroups are moderated. A group of people called moderators checks all postings before allowing them to go through to the newsgroup. Again the FAQ will tell you if it is a moderated newsgroup.
What does a Post look like?
Each posting has two basic components, the message header and the message body. The header contains information about the author and where it is being posted. The message body contains the actual content of the message.
Sample header:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Path: news.slurp.net
From: Bob Surfer
Newsgroups: alt.testing
Subject: testing this thing out!
Date: Sunday, 15 Sept 2002 09:09:57 +0000
Message-ID: <rkpT9DAl2vB1E bobsurfer@slurp.net>
Reply-To: Bob Surfer <bobsurfer@slurp.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: news.slurp.net
X-NNTP-Posting-Host: news.slurp.net
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Newsreader: Typhoon
Xref: news.slurp.net alt.testing:73218835
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The most important features of the header are as follows and indicated in italics:
From:
The person who sent the message.
Newsgroups:
Which newsgroups the message is being sent to.
Subject:
A short description of the contents of the message.
Reply-To:
Who the reply should go to if a reply should be emailed instead of on the newsgroup.
While most postings are made to a single newsgroup, it is possible to cross-post. This means to post the same message to several relevant newsgroups. Cross posting should only be done when appropriate and very sparingly. For example, an author may send the same message to alt.mybook and alt.mybookreviews, as he or she would normally set any replies to be followed up in the alt.somesubject newsgroup, as alt.answers is a moderated newsgroup.
Most newsreaders support the concept of kill rules. Before collecting news articles from a news server, the newsreader will check against a list of articles that you do not wish to download based on certain criteria. This criteria is called a kill rule. For example, in the above header, there is an entry called "Lines:" which defines how many lines are in the message. If you want to avoid downloading very large articles you could set a kill rule preventing your newsreader from downloading any articles over say 1000 lines. This kill rule would examine the 'lines' part of the header and only download articles with less than 1000 lines.
The message header will still appear in the list of messages for the newsgroup, but the message body will not. If you wanted to download the message body, the newsreader will normally have a facility to do this.
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|