VII. Usenet 

1. Usenet A large collection (15000+) of discussion groups involving millions 
from all over the world.  Each discussion group is centered about a particular 
topic and consists of a collection of messages with a particular Subject 
heading.  The entire Usenet is a traveling message (data) base propagated from 
Computer to Computer hourly.

2. Characteristics: 	
* Usenet is free.  (Part of the Internet.)
* No central authority controls Usenet; It is run by the people who use it
* New newsgroups (collections of articles) arise in a timely and democratic 
	manner
* A Computerized Bulletin Board where people read and post messages (articles)
* A newsreader is required to read Usenet; a newsposter program for posting.
* The Message base is downloaded hourly (100-500MB of information stored)
* Most Messages can be kept between two days and two weeks, then are expired

3. Newsreaders offer a User Interface to Usenet to:
	* Select and keep track of the newsgroups you want to read
	* Select the articles within the newsgroup you want to read
	* Save an article to a file
	* Mail an E-mail reply to the person who posted the message
	* Compose a follow-up message to be posted.

4. Statistics (early 1994):
* 26,400-40,000 Messages per day for a total of 56.2 MB to 85MB 
of storage
* At least 80,000 different sites with 6,000,000 Readers and 
2,900,000 Posters

5. News Group Hierarchies
	Name		Topic
	alt		Alternative newsgroups
	bionet		biology
	bit		Bitnet Topics
	biz		Business, marketing, advertisements
	comp		Computers
	clari		Clarinet (real) news service [Read-only]
	ddn		Defense Data Network
	gnu		Free Software Foundation
	ieee		Institute of Electrical and Electronics 
					Engineers
	info		From University of Illinois mailing lists
	k12		Kindergarten Through high school
	misc		anything that doesnŐt fit
	news		about Usenet itself
	rec		recreation, hobbies, the arts
	sci		science of all types
	soc		social issues
	talk		debate on controversial topics
	
6. Popular Newsgroups
	news.announce.newusers
	news.announce.newgroups
	seattle.forsale.computers
	new.newusers.questions
	seattle.jobs.offered
	news.announce.important
	news.answers
	seattle.general
	rec.humor.funny
	comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc
	comp.unix.questions
	news.groups

7. The .newsrc file contains the personalized subscription list of newsgroups 
that a newsreader will display.  Information is also stored about which 
articles have been read. Edit this file to show the most interesting (to you) 
newsgroups first, since you can't read everything.  To unsubscribe to a 
newsgroup in this file, change the colon to an exclamation point just after 
the newsgroup name.

8.  Posting articles
Use Pnews to post new articles.  This is an interface to the inews program.  
* Indicate the distribution code (local, boeing, pnw, usa, na)
* Crossposting an article to several related newsgroups permits one copy of the
article to show up in the several newsgroups. Not to be confused with Spamming.
(Crossposting to unrelated and large numbers of newsgroups)  e.g.:
		Newsgroups: seattle.general,seattle.forsale.misc
* Followups for crossposted articles should go to the primary group. e.g.
		Followups: seattle.general

9. Responding to articles (following up)
* Send private e-mail to the person who wrote the article (this adds to one 
	mail file).
* Post a followup  article to the newsgroup. (this adds to the message base!)
* Decision Criteria:
	- if your response is only of interest to the article's author, send 
e-mail
	- if you are really mad, take a walk before doing anything. If you 
are still mad and have to reply, compose e-mail.  If you still remain mad 
after this, send e-mail
	- If the original article contains non-grammatical errors that 
everyone reading it should know about, post a follow-up article, but 
only after checking that other people haven't already done the same thing.
	- If you have additional information about the subject that would 
be of universal interest to those reading the original article, post a 
follow-up article.	
* Responding by e-mail in trn to the current article.

1.  Decide whether you want to quote parts of the article in your E-mail. 
Press R if so, r if not.
2.  If you haven't prepared a file in advance to include in your e-mail, 
press Enter or y
3.  If you don't like the suggested editor, launch your own editor, otherwise 
press Enter.
4.  Delete unneeded text like header lines, and parts you will not be 
discussing in your message.
5.  Type in your reply.  Be clear, polite, and reasonable.
6. Save your message and quit the editor.
7. To run the spell checker, press C; To abandon sending this E-mail, press A;
    To go back into the editor, press E; To send the message, press S.  Then 
press Enter.
8. To append your .signature file at the end of the message, press y [or n] 
and press Enter.

* Responding by posting an article in trn as follow-up to the current article.

1. Press F to post a follow-up with inclusion of some or all of the original 
article
2. trn asks if you are sure?  Press n or spacebar to abort, y to continue
3. Press Enter to bypass the prepared text file feature
4. Launch your favorite editor or press Enter
5. Delete any newsgroups that wouldn't be interested in your article
6. Move down to the beginning of the text of the article you are replying to 
and delete unnecessary text.
7. Type your reply.  Be clear, concise, polite, and reasonable.
8. Save your message and quit the editor.
9. To run the spell checker, press C; To abandon sending this E-mail, press A;
    To go back into the editor, press E; To send the message, press S.  
Then press Enter.
10. To append your .signature file at the end of the message, press y [or n] 
and press Enter.
11. If you are posting to an unmoderated newsgroup, your article will be 
distributed according to the distribution code.  If you are posting to a 
moderated newsgroup, your article will be E-mailed to the moderator, who 
will subsequently decide if your article is worthy of inclusion. You will 
get an automated reply and sometimes follow-up mail from the moderator.

10. A Thread is a collection of articles in a newsgroup on the same subject.
    A Killfile (text file named kill) is a list of articles you don't want to 
view (in trn type K to screen the current one) entities to be avoided could 
include global commands to ignore a particular  poster, and local command to 
ignore a particular subject or thread or article in a newsgroup.  

11. Subscribing to a new newsgroup.  Run the command 
	$ newsgroups pattern
	e.g. newsgroups windows.nt to get the full name
     Outside the newsreader:
	$ echo comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc >> $HOME/.newsrc 
							#append to .newsrc
     Inside the [trn] newsreader, type:
	 g comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc To make this your current newsgroup and 
subscribe if necessary.

12. Searching for articles:
	nn newsreader	$ nn [options]
* -s WORD	Collect only articles containing the string WORD in subject
				(case insensitive), Combine with -x -m options.
* -n WORD	Same as -s, but look for WORD in the senders' name
* -i			Case Sensitive option turned on
* -m			merge all items into one pseudogroup to get one menu list, none
				marked as read
* -x[N]		Present [or scan] all [or last N] unread as well as read articles.
* -X			Read/scan unsubscribed groups also.
		e.g $ nn -mxX "-n full name" all


   trn newsreader $ trn -x -X [other options]	# turns on all features
* /text[/+]	Search subject line of unread articles for string text, 
			select to read
* /text[/++]	Search subject threads for string text, select to read
* /text/h[+]	Search header lines of unread articles for string text, 
			select to read
* /text/a[+]	Search unread articles for string text, select to read
* U/text/	Search subject line of previous articles for string text
* U/text/h[+]	Search header lines of previous articles for string text
* U/text/a[+]	Search previous articles for string text
* /name/f:+	Search all articles for "name" using the from line
* /name/f:++	Search all threads for "name" using the from line

	use gtext at the article reading level to move to the first 
	instance of text in the article

	/topic/a:++:s topic.%#	saves searched articles as files called 
	topic.1 topic.2 etc.

14. Signature Files (4 lines or less is better)
.signature: File used to autoappend your name, e-mail address, etc to a posted 
article or
.news_sig: File used to append your name, e-mail address, etc, via f or F 
commands
.mail_sig: File used to append your name, e-mail address, etc via r or R 
commands

15. Helpful Hints for trn
* Specify configuration files for trn in the shell environment variable 
TRNINIT, usually set to $HOME/.trninit
* To minimize trn asking for new newsgroup subscriptions, use the -q option 
to invoke trn or type N to say no to all of them.
* Use trn -p to automatically select any thread that you have posted a message 
to
* Use trn -G to use a loose match algorithm on groups it cannot find.
* Use X in the selector marks all the articles in the current newsgroup as 
having been read
* To tailor the attribution "In article <...>, joe@host (Joe User) wrote:"
	person's name only: %)f
	person's address only: %>f
	-EATTRIBUTION='According to %)f <%>f>
* Reroute replies to your postings to go to a different machine than you posted
from:
	-EREPLYTO="<userid>@diffhost.domain (Real Name)"
* The keystroke "-" toggles between the last two entered articles, read or not;
if the subject or part of the subject is known, type /searchstring/m to mark it
as unread for rereading
* At the newsgroup selection level, type /string to get prompted for next 
newsgroup containing string
* While reading a thread, Press T+ to preserve the followup selections that 
will be automatically selected in the future.  If selecting thread(s), 
use :T+ <CR>

16. Usenet Slang
BRB		be right back		BTW	By the way
CU		See you later		FAQ	Frequently
 						Asked
						Questions
FWIW	For what it's worth		FYI	For your
 						information
IMHO	In my humble opinion		MOTAS	Members of the
 						appropriate sex
MOTSS	Members of the same sex		MOTOS	Members of the
 						opposite sex
OB	Obligatory			OTOH	On the other
 						hand
RTFM	Read the manual first		SO	Significant
 						Other
WRT	With respect to			YMMV	Your mileage
 						may vary

Questions? Robert Katz: katz@ned.highline.edu
Last Update December 7, 1999