Questions Frequently Asked by New Newsgroup Users

• A newsgroup is something like a mailbox that the public is invited to use to store e-mail (“posts”) sent to the mailbox. Anybody who wants to look in the newsgroup to read the posts that have been sent to it may do so.

• The name of a newsgroup is its mailing address.

• A newsreader is a piece of software that lets users look in the newsgroup, sort the posts that are there, read the posts, or make new posts.

• GARNA: “Get a real newsreader, [amigo].”

• The totality of all news servers that provide newsgroups.

• Exactly how to define it is a matter of much debate. Here is a classic article on Usenet; and a reply to that article.

• A brief description of Usenet.

• The history of the big-8, which played a major role in the history of Usenet.

• “Usenet is a worldwide electronic discussion community. It dates from before the Internet, when articles were tranmitted with modems over phone lines. Now the Internet is used. Each newsgroup is dedicated to a specific topic. Articles are copied from the originating site to other participating sites [news servers]” University of Virgina ITC.

• An ordered list of newsgroups.

• Each of the subsets of the Big-8 is a hierarchy (comp.*, humanities.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, talk.*).

• Each of the subsets of the eight hierarchies may be called a hierarchy if it does have or potentially may have more than one newsgroup sharing the same initial components in the name. So, for example, the misc.health.* hierarchy is the list of all newsgroups whose names begin with “misc.health”:

misc.health.aids	AIDS issues and support.
misc.health.alternative	Alternative, complementary and holistic health care.
misc.health.arthritis	Arthritis and related disorders.
misc.health.diabetes	Discussion of diabetes management in day to day life.
misc.health.infertility	Treatment & support of infertility.
misc.health.injuries.rsi.misc	All about Repetitive Strain Injuries.
misc.health.therapy.occupational	All areas of occupational therapy.

• In the preceding example, “misc.health.injuries.rsi” could become a new hierarchy if other newsgroups beginning with those four components were added to the list such as “misc.health.injuries.rsi.diagnosis”, “misc.health.injuries.rsi.support”, or “misc.health.injuries.rsi.tech”.

• Google archives most newsgroups on Usenet and makes the old articles available through a page-based interface. Most news servers only hold articles for a short time depending on how the news administrator has set up the system.
• Google also provides a method for creating new Google Groups that are Google-specific; such groups do not circulate on Usenet news servers.
• Google is not a traditional news service provider. Neither the newsgroup archives nor the non-Usenet Google Groups can be accessed by a news reader.

• On Usenet, articles are copied from the originating site to other participating sites; web forums are hosted by one internet site.

• Usenet groups can be accessed using a newsreader; web forums are accessed using an internet browser (Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera, etc.).

• The person who controls the host site for the web forum controls the forum; there is no such central administration for Usenet.

• Nobody. It's decentralized.
• Everybody who uses it. Drive carefully. Buckle your Usenet seatbelts.
• News administrators. They decide what newsgroups are carried on their news servers.
• Moderators of groups (if the group is moderated).
• Hierarchy administrators. They make up lists that may or may not be carried by news administrators. The Big-Eight Management Board is an example of hierarchy administration, except that the Board has eight lists to think about.

• It is a consortium of eight Usenet hierarchies. The eight lists are all managed by Big-Eight Management Board.

• For more information, see the history of the Big-8.

• It is a site that translates news into mail and (sometimes) mail into news.
• If it is uni-directional, the translation only goes in one direction. People can read input from one source but not respond to it.
• If it is bi-directional, the translation goes in both directions. Users receive all input both from the mailing list and the newsgroup and may reply to any post/e-mail by using e-mail or a newsreader.
• Links to mail-to-news gateways.

• Why can't I see the newsgroup?
• Why can't I see posts that other people see?
• Why can't I see my posts?
• How do I post pictures to the newsgroup?
• Why is everybody yelling at me for posting pictures to the newsgroup?
• What is HTML?
• Why don't people like HTML?
• WHAT IS A 'CAPS LOCK KEY'?
• Can't somebody get rid of all that spam?
• How do I post a message to every newsgroup in the world?
• How do I keep from seeing all the pornographic pictures?
• How do I get to see all the pornographic pictures?
• How can I post my pornographic pictures to a newsgroup?
• Is everybody as sarcastic and short-tempered as you are?

Whatever You Do, Don't Visit This Newsgroup Unprepared
news:news.groups can be a little hard on newcomers. Proceed with caution!
Read Google's news.groups archive to see what I mean.
Other Pages on This Website
Overview of FAQS, Standards, Usenet links, etc.	Understanding Usenet
news.groups.proposals	History of the Big-8
List of All Big-8 Newsgroups	News Service Providers
Glossary