Introduction to Usenet
What is "Usenet" and why do you want to use it?
Usenet is an anarchic collection of thousands of machines worldwide which have agreed to ship news (information) to each other, in the form of articles (individual messages) tagged with newsgroup, or topic, headings. Like a web forum, news allows you to interact with a wide variety of strangers who share some interest; like electronic mail, news is an international effort.
People participate for the same reasons they might want to subscribe to a magazine, or write a letter to the editor of a newspaper, or go to a coffee house or cocktail party for conversation. Usenet participants can "post" their own articles, follow up to other writers' articles, send electronic mail responding to others' articles, or just read about any of hundreds of topics that interest them. Newsgroups cover subjects ranging from bicycling and movies to literature and politics to hundreds of scientific and technical areas.
News in general
Once you've read this document and the documentation for your preferred newsreader, please direct any questions to the NSIT Support Line (8:30-8:30 weekdays, 834-8324), or mail them at support@uchicago.edu.
If you discover problems with the news on NSIT's news server, or if you have suggestions about news, drop a note giving the specifics to the UChicago news administrator at news@news.uchicago.edu.
We recommend, when you first begin to read news, that you follow the "uchi." groups and news.newusers.questions. The former will give you a sense of how news works, and the latter is an excellent source of answers for novice news users – if you have questions that Support Line staff can't answer about news, you can ask them in this group. (Please ask us for help first, though.)
How Usenet news works
Articles are written and posted by people on any of the thousands of machines which make up Usenet. Each article is posted to one or more newsgroups; it is then copied from its original site to every other site on Usenet which takes the newsgroup(s) to which the article belongs.
News is stored at each site in some central location, where anybody can read it (and, in most cases, contribute to the simmering stew). Reading and posting are generally accomplished with the help of special software packages called newsreaders.
Newsgroups and hierarchies
Understanding newsgroup names
Each newsgroup is a forum on a particular topic. For example, you might want to read about science fiction, or the C++ programming language, or Jewish culture. Newsgroup names reflect their subjects -- for example, rec.arts.sf.movies, soc.culture.jewish, and comp.lang.c++.
The most common complaint we hear about Usenet news on campus is that there's so much to choose from. At this writing our campus news server, uchinews, carries around fifteen hundred newsgroups -- and no one has the time to read more than a small fraction of those; any given group may receive hundreds of articles a day. It doesn't look quite so daunting, though, if you know a little about how newsgroups are organized.
Dots in newsgroup names show that the names are hierarchical:
- rec.arts.sf.movies – science fiction is a subset of "arts", which are recreational ("rec");
- soc.culture.jewish – "Jewish" is a subset of "culture", and all culture newsgroups can be found under the "soc" (social) hierarchy of groups; and
- comp.lang.c++ – the C++ language ("lang") is a subset of computer ("comp") topics.
Newsgroup names are chosen this way to show the logical relationships between them; this makes it easier for sites to manage each type of newsgroup, and for you to easily locate appropriate newsgroups. (On most machines, articles are also stored hierarchically; see Local setup below.)
So if you were interested in college basketball, you might look through the "rec" groups for those dealing with sports, and see that one of the basketball groups is called "rec.sport.basketball.college".
Other major Usenet hierarchies are "talk," for subjects generating extended discussion (like talk.abortion or talk.religion.newage); "sci," for scientific topics; "news" for groups discussing Usenet news itself; and "misc" for miscellaneous Usenet newsgroups (such as misc.consumers).
Many Usenet sites, including uchinews, also carry a set of alternative and regional hierarchies which are not considered part of mainstream Usenet, but which are handled exactly like other newsgroups. These include "alt," the first alternative hierarchy; "bionet," for biological research topics; and "gnu," for groups discussing projects of the Free Software Foundation. Regional hierarchies available on campus include "uchi," for University of Chicago topics; and "chi" groups, for topics specific to the Chicago area.
What newsgroups are available?
While you can figure out many newsgroups simply from their names, a brief description is often useful. For a complete, current list of newsgroups carried by uchinews, you could log in to harper and look at the file /usr/local/lib/news/newsgroups, which contains every one of the newsgroups carried at the University, each with a one-line description. (You can read the file into your favorite editor for browsing, or make yourself a copy for editing and sorting.)
Getting started
Reading news
To read any newsgroup of your choice, simply start up your newsreader. On harper, where you either already have an account or can quickly activate one, the newsreader we make available is called trn. Just type trn at the Unix shell prompt, and you're on your way.
If you generally use another shared system on campus, you should ask your system administrator which newsreaders are installed. Some of the more common ones are trn; another, similar, package called nn, and an ancestor of trn, known simply as rn-- all for Unix systems. VMS users may find a package called ANU News. Some campus NeXT systems have NewsGrazer. While newsreaders have been written for the Macintosh (NewsWatcher) and MS-DOS machines (Trumpet), we cannot recommend any of them yet.
Your newsreader should be set up to know about our news server, uchinews.uchicago.edu. Once set up, it will manage your personal list of subscribed newsgroups; the software will show you all available (and unread) articles in each newsgroup you read. Since uchinews keeps articles in most newsgroups for 7-18 days, when you first read a newsgroup, you'll be able to see all the articles available from the last week or two.
Most newsreaders have some kind of internal help. In trn, which has extensive help at every level of the program (type `h' at any point), one of the first screens of information you see will tell you the basics of what to do, and where to get more help; it will also tell you to read the articles in news.announce.newusers (if those articles aren't there, look for copies in the directory /usr/local/doc/news/newusers on harper.
Replying to articles
You can reply to articles in a newsgroup with your newsreader's "reply" command, which fires up email software to send a reply directly to the author of the article. In most cases, this is a better idea than posting a followup article; you should post only if your reply is of interest to other readers of the newsgroup.
Please check to see that the address generated by the email software is a valid one, and matches the address in the author's signature, if any. For information on understanding various email addresses see NSIT's document "Internet Email Addressing.
Technical digressions
Usenet and "real" networks
Usenet is not an actual physical network; it is a "logical network" consisting of all the machines in the world which exchange news. Articles can be transferred using the Internet, or phone lines, or CD-ROM, or station wagons full of magnetic tape. (A few newsgroups are "gatewayed" from mailing lists, meaning someone has set up software such that all messages to a mailing list get funneled into a news system, and thus to the rest of Usenet.) To be "on Usenet" means that you have the ability to read news; there is no such thing as a Usenet address.
Usenet is not equivalent to the Internet. The Internet also carries electronic mail, file-transfer, name server, and other traffic; Usenet, as explained above, travels by many routes besides the Internet.
Local software setup
The NSIT Server Cluster, which includes harper, is set up to look like one machine. News articles are stored in a directory tree on uchinews called /usr/spool/news, but this is not visible from harper.
The news system on uchinews consists of this storage area, known as the "news spool"; the transport mechanism, NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol), the software which moves news between uchinews and other Internet machines; and C News, the software which manages and files incoming news articles.
All machines on campus may read news from uchinews. Uchinews news articles are not available from off-campus unless you are dialing in directly to the campus modem pool.
Newsgroup culture and netiquette
While it is sometimes easy to forget in the give-and-take of Usenet, all the participants behind the screens are human. To make interaction easier and more pleasant, rules of conduct have evolved, a kind of Usenet etiquette – "netiquette" for short (For additional information, read our posting guidelines).
Imagine that you are attending a party in a foreign country. You would probably not walk blindly into a group of people at the party in a foreign country and begin talking, without knowing any of the people and what they were talking about, or a little about their culture. In the same way, it's an excellent idea to read the introductory materials on Usenet culture and etiquette, and to know a little about a specific newsgroup before you post to it (by first reading a few days' worth of articles there).
Many newsgroups have their own "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQ) articles; you can find these in the newsgroup news.answers. Before you ask a question in a specific group, it's a good idea to check the FAQ first.
Before you attempt to post news, you must be familiar with the introductory articles in news.announce.newusers. If the complete set (there are about two dozen) is not there when you read that newsgroup, you can find copies in the directory /usr/local/doc/news/newusers on harper.
Remember that access to Usenet is not a right. The University imposes certain restrictions on your use, including the expectation that you'll respect netiquette. If you're uncomfortable with restrictions on your use, you can set up your own site (we'll be happy to help you do so), or pay for an account on a public-access site; a list of the latter can be found on harper in the directory /usr/local/doc/public-sites. For more information on responsible use, consult the NSIT Resource Guide.
Posting your own articles
Once you've read the netiquette materials, you might try posting an article yourself. A good place to do this is in the newsgroup uchi.test, which is designed for local test articles. (Never post tests to a non-test newsgroup -- you'll annoy its readers, and waste a good deal of money transmitting your article to sites which don't want test articles.)
Whether you're posting a new article or following up to someone else's article, you'll need to know what the article's headers mean.
Editing the headers
No matter what newsreader you use to post, you will usually pay most attention to the Subject: and Newsgroups: headers.
Subject:
Fill in your subject if you're beginning a new thread of conversation. If you're following up someone else's article, please make sure that the Subject: line is still relevant to the topic of discussion; if it isn't, change it.
Newsgroups:
If you're beginning a new thread, fill in one or more appropriate newsgroups on this line.
If you want your article to go to more than one group, you should crosspost it, meaning that you list all newsgroups on the same line, with commas between each:
Newsgroups: uchi.test,chi.test
By doing this rather than posting separately to each group, you ensure that your article need only be read, transmitted and stored once, no matter how many groups you post it to. (Obviously, don't go overboard; you really shouldn't post any article to more than a handful of newsgroups.)
If you're following up an article, the Newsgroups: line will be filled in by your newsreader. If there is more than one group listed, please check to see that you want your article to go to every one of those groups, and edit the list if necessary.
Followup-To:
Because you might want to call your article to the attention of more than one newsgroup, not all of which are appropriate for followups, you may want to specify a single group in which the thread should be continued.
One very good reason to double-check your Newsgroups: header, above, is that authors of articles you follow up may have set their Followup-To: lines to inappropriate -- or nonexistent -- newsgroups.
If you want people to reply directly to you, and not to follow up publicly, fill in the word "poster":
Followup-To: poster
(Don't use an email address here.)
Distribution:
If you are posting an article to a regional newsgroup (like uchi.test), this may be filled in for you: "uchi" would mean that your article would only be copied to machines at the University of Chicago and its affiliates.
Otherwise, you should think about how far you want your article to spread: is it appropriate only to readers in Chicago (a car-for-sale ad, for instance)? Should everyone on Usenet in the world see it? Distributions you can use are:
local: uchinews only
uchi: news servers at the University of Chicago and its affiliates (like Fermilab and Argonne)
chi: Chicago area
il: Illinois
usa: United States
na: North America
world: everywhere on Usenet in the world
(You might also, in certain newsgroups, use "inet": all machines on Usenet which receive news via the Internet. You cannot, unfortunately, use a distribution other than those listed here -- to limit a request for information from Texas to readers in the "tx" distribution, for instance.)
Summary:
Keywords:
These are straightforward. If you want to add a line summarizing your article, or a brief list of important topics or concepts in your article, list them here. Most people don't use them, though.
Expires:
The date your article should be expired (removed from news servers), if this is sooner than the expiration time at most sites. You should use this line only in certain rare instances.
Organization:
If you don't specify one, this will be filled in by the software, as "University of Chicago.
Editing your article
Now is the moment of truth: what are you going to say? Write your article; be sure that your text is separated by at least one blank line from the headers, and that you've edited down any included text to the minimum necessary.
Remember that many newsgroups have special rules -- about marking spoilers, rotating questionable material, and so on. (You should have already checked the FAQ posting for the group, if any.)
You can have your newsreader append a signature automatically, if you choose -- containing your name, email address and perhaps a brief quotation. Remember to keep the signature to four lines or fewer.
Finally: it is a very good idea to double-check the headers before you tell your newsreading software to go ahead and post your article. Trust us.
Automatic headers
The news software will fill in these headers for you:
From: Your name and email address.
Path: The path your article has taken -- which machines have copied it, so far.
Message-ID: A unique identifier for your article.
Sender: news@uchinews.uchicago.edu, the address to which problem reports will be mailed if necessary.
Date: The date and time (in Greenwich Mean Time) your article was received by uchinews.
Checking your article
Shortly after you post your article, you should take a look at it using your newsreader. (Wait a few minutes for your article to reach uchinews and be filed in the appropriate newsgroups.) If you find you've made a serious error in posting, cancel your article right away, using your newsreader's "cancel" command: the fewer systems a bad article is copied to, the better for everyone concerned.
Learning more
Using the software
The basics of reading, posting, and replying to articles depend on the mechanics of your particular newsreader. (To print an article, just save it into a file on disk, edit out any unnecessary headers, and use your favorite print command.)
Each Unix system with a newsreader installed has a man page for that newsreader. On harper, we have man pages for both rn and trn. Most of them have internal help as well; to receive help in trn, for example, type an `h' at any point. (If you're using a package like gnus or nn to read news, you can learn more from the group news.software.readers.)
If you read news from a non-Unix shared system, consult your system administrator about available documentation.
Enjoy!
Last updated: 10/03/06
