Despite the explosive growth of the World Wide Web, e-mail (short for electronic mail) remains the most-used online activity for most people. E-mail offers the versatility of postal mail, the speed of a fax, and unparalleled convenience—at
least for those who are connected to the Net and can take advantage of e-mail. Mailing lists and newsgroups are essentially extensions of e-mail that take it beyond one-to-one dialogs to facilitate one-to-many communications and virtual group discussions
that can involve participants around the globe.
This chapter covers the basics of using e-mail, mailing lists, and newsgroups, providing the background information and introducing terminology for the upcoming chapters, which cover how to use the e-mail and newsgroup facilities. If you're new to the
Internet, you'll want to get acquainted with the concepts covered in this chapter. If you're a veteran Internet user, you'll probably want to skip (or just skim) this chapter and move ahead to the chapters that follow.
Before the World Wide Web took the Internet by storm, the main reason people went through the effort to get connected to the Internet was to send and receive e-mail. Despite the sometimes cryptic commands of the early Internet and lack of handwritten
"personality" of personal letters, there were a lot of benefits that made the Internet learning curve worth it. E-mail and its mailing list and newsgroup variations are still an important part of the Internet experience—and the new
generation of software makes it easier than ever to use.
E-mail has several advantages over postal mail. For starters, e-mail can arrive at its destination virtually immediately without having to pay for (or even lick) a stamp, regardless of how far the final destination is. While messages might take as long
as several hours to hop from one side of the continent to the other, more often than not the recipient can be reading your note just minutes after you send it on its way. In fact, messages can be sent so fast that many people have started calling the
regular postal service "snail-mail," referring to the snail's pace conventional envelopes and packages seemed to take in comparison. And of course, there is virtually no special charge for the delivery beyond regular account costs.
E-mail has other advantages, as well. Because e-mail is primarily text based, businesses or co-workers can easily send documents to each other without the need to retype material, allowing easy collaboration over great distances. Because e-mail is
electronic, the document can easily be read, forwarded, or archived without wasting either paper or filing space. And because e-mail is fast and cheap, more and more people are using it every year, so there are more and more people and businesses you can
communicate with via this exciting new method.
Despite the apparent simplicity of the e-mail concept, early users had to struggle with minor problems and pitfalls, not the least of which was the complexity of the programs that early e-mailers had to use. Programs such as Microsoft Internet Mail go
a
long way toward making e-mail easier to use, but there are other issues you need to be aware of. This chapter will help you avoid some common e-mail difficulties before they cause problems.
The most common way to think of what e-mail is to compare it to regular, old "snail-mail." However, it is much more similar to sending a fax to someone with a super-duper facsimile machine with some futuristic features.
In its simplest form, e-mail consists of three basic elements: the recipient's address, the subject of the message, and the actual message itself. In reverse order, the message is the text that you want your recipient to read, sort of like the
handwritten sheet of paper that you would feed through the fax machine or stick in an envelope before licking it shut. This is the "substance" or "body" of the e-mail you send. The subject provides a one-line summary of the
message, sort of like what you might write on a fax cover page or the outside of an envelope, providing your recipient a quick way to view the general intent of the message for easy filing, or to determine which e-mail to read first. The address is
the e-mail address of the recipient, normally in the form of the recipient's log-in name, followed by an "at" sign (@), followed by the name of the recipient's Internet site, all written as a single "word" without spaces and usually in
lowercase, such as jdoe@nowhere.com. You create e-mail on your computer, then send it electronically, through the Internet or your local network, to the recipients' computers, where they read it on-screen. It never has to be printed or handled in physical
form.
Frequently, more complex e-mail possesses two more elements: signatures and attachments. Signatures roughly correspond to a conventional, handwritten signature that you add to the bottom of typewritten letters or faxes. Signatures are intended
to
both add a bit of personality to the hard look of screens of typewritten text and to provide useful information about the sender. In addition to your name, a signature might include a favorite quote plus your title and company affiliation, an address for
sending a return message, or a URL to your Web page. Internet Mail (and most other e-mail software) automatically adds signatures to the bottom of e-mail messages as they are sent out, so you need to create a signature only once for all your outgoing
messages to be stamped with it. Attachments are extra computer files that are attached to the message portion of e-mail and are along for the ride to the e-mail's final destination. Similar to dropping a disk with some GIF images or Word documents
in an envelope along with your note, attachments are used to send a binary file (a file containing anything other than regular text) over the Internet. As long as the sender and recipient are using e-mail programs that can handle attachments (like
Internet
Mail and Exchange Inbox), you can seamlessly transmit data files from user to user without having to worry about setting up servers or assigning passwords.
E-mail combines the speediness and familiarity of faxed messages with the flexibility and certainty of delivery of the postal service (for whatever that is worth), but with some of the caveats of both types of communication. Before getting into
how to send e-mail messages, it's important to be aware of the subtle nuances or problems of e-mail and how to avoid them.
The most obvious benefit to using the Internet as a method to transmit e-mail is speed and reliability, which usually can be counted on to get messages from Point A to Point B in less than a day. Frequently, messages are delivered to recipients in just
a few minutes, just like a fax, allowing a sort of extended conversation between people constantly checking their e-mail.
Because this speed can change from day to day due to occasional network problems, computer failures, or minor glitches, e-mail can keep bouncing around the Internet for many hours as it attempts to find a path to its destination. As a result, immediate
transmission is not always guaranteed. Fortunately, it is exceptionally rare that an e-mail message gets so lost that it never arrives at its destination because the Internet was designed from the start to deal with almost any network problems.
Therefore, chances are the mail will eventually get through.
Despite the fact that most e-mail gets to where it needs to go faster than you can refill your cup of coffee, sometimes all that speed is wasted. Frequently, people don't check their e-mail very often, and as a result, you might get frustrated waiting
for a quick response. In a way, this is what makes e-mail most like using a fax machine to communicate with someone; while you can be pretty certain that the message got there in a minute, it might still be sitting in the fax machine's paper tray for
hours
or days before being read!
Unfortunately, being patient is about the only thing you can do about the situation. After all, different people have different Internet connections and e-mail reading priorities. Some people are connected to the Internet in such a way that e-mail gets
collected only once every few hours or days. Some people receive so much e-mail every day that it just takes a long time to get to it all. While writing a useful subject line with your e-mail may help it stand out and increase your chances of getting a
timely response, you can't always expect prompt replies to e-mail.
Not to belabor a point, but recall that e-mail is short for electronic mail, which means that it has many of the same properties of a computer file: it is easy to make copies, portions of your e-mail can be cut and pasted into other files, and
e-mail messages can be filed away for years without taking up much office space. In fact, most e-mail reading programs save a copy of all received e-mail by default, so most people are archiving everything they receive without even thinking about it.
Compare this to the stacks of faxes and letters that you routinely read, act upon, and toss in the trash.
While all these properties are certainly advantageous when you receive e-mail, you should remember that your recipients can easily copy, edit, and archive every word you type to them without much effort, so there is almost always a transportable,
written record of what you wrote. Certainly, this isn't anything to be concerned about for the vast majority of what you will probably write in an e-mail message, but consider those instances when you criticize the performance of a co-worker, send price
quotes for goods and services to a specific customer, or even just send a good joke you just heard to a friend. Were any of these things said around the water cooler or at a coffee shop, or even passed around in a memo or faxed, chances are your words
would be understood and then discarded without thought. Remarks made via e-mail, on the other hand, can easily be recalled even months after you send them, and re-sent to someone else or copied into anther file without your knowledge. A remark made off
the
cuff in confidence could easily be copied word-for-word and revealed to almost anyone. In short, after your recipients have your e-mail, they can pretty much do anything they want with your words, and without your knowledge.
Does this mean that you should never use e-mail to disclose anything? Of course not—I'm just illustrating the point to the extreme. Most people are perfectly civil to each other and aren't out to get the people who send them e-mail. However, with
these facts in mind, if you really want to make sure that what you say via e-mail isn't a liability, there are some simple guidelines you can follow:
When people send e-mail to your e-mail address, it is forwarded through the Internet network until it reaches the e-mail server at your Internet Service Provider or local network. The message is stored on the e-mail server until you retrieve it with an
e-mail reading program such as Internet Mail or Exchange Inbox. Only then can you interact with your mail by reading, responding, and filing it for later use.
One of the nicer things about e-mail is that it is a heck of a lot easier to manage than regular mail or faxes. Because e-mail is electronic, you can easily do any of the following:
The mechanics of creating and sending an e-mail message will vary slightly depending on which e-mail program you use. However, the basics remain the same. You use the e-mail program's built-in text editor to compose your message, supply the recipient's
e-mail address and a descriptive subject for the message, and the e-mail program will handle the details of connecting to the e-mail server and sending the message on its way over the Internet.
E-mail is a strange combination of formal writing (because it's typed) and informal chatting (because it is quickly created and transmitted). This combination of factors can sometimes lead to misunderstandings and problems in communicating. Most people
writing e-mail tend to write what they would say if they were talking out loud in a friendly conversation, while readers must do without the benefit of direct presence.
Readers cannot see your facial expressions when you write e-mail, nor can they sense when you might raise or lower your voice to either set a serious mood or a casual tone. Sarcasm generally doesn't translate well into e-mail either because you can't
gesture with your hands, chuckle at a remark, or lean close to keep a conversation just between two people.
Over time, a system of symbols and conventions has been worked out to convey these sort of feelings within e-mail, including smileys or emoticons, common abbreviations, and special characters to add emphasis.
Although you can't be right next to your recipient grinning a silly grin or winking after a sarcastic remark, you can do the next best thing by making use of smileys (sometimes called emoticons) directly next to the sentence in question,
such as
Boy was that an exciting meeting. ;-)
If that combination of a semicolon, dash, and parentheses doesn't make any sense to you, turn this book on its side (or just tilt your head to the left) and look at it again. From that orientation, this apparent jumble of characters resembles a
smiling,
winking face, just like what you might do with your own face after making a sarcastic or silly remark.
There are lots of different emotions or feelings that people can convey through e-mail with smileys; so many, in fact, that there are several books and Web pages dedicated to listing them all. Here are some of the most popular:
| : | ) Smiling and happy |
| : | ( Sad and unhappy |
| : | O Surprised or shocked, sometimes used sarcastically |
| ***8 | ) A nagging mother remark (like Marge Simpson) |
| : | I "I don't know about this..." |
If you'd like to check out the hundreds of different (and sometimes outright weird) emoticons that people have come up with, then use Internet Explorer to jump to The Smiley Dictionary at
http://olympe.polytechnique.fr/~violet/Smileys/
or The Unofficial Smiley Dictionary at
http://www.eff.org/papers/eegtti/eeg_286.html.
Abbreviations grew from the need to stop typing so many characters when trying to communicate a simple idea. For example, instead of typing to a system administrator, "I really need assistance at your earliest convenience," I might simply
type, "SOS ASAP!!!" This section isn't really here to encourage you to start using abbreviations if you don't want to (you aren't obligated to in any way), but rather to help you understand some of the more common abbreviations you may
encounter. It's FYI (that is, for your information). Here are some of them:
| BTW | By the Way |
| IANAL | I Am Not A Lawyer |
| IMHO | In My Humble Opinion |
| IMNSHO | In My Not So Humble Opinion |
| AFAIK | As Far As I Know |
| LOL | Laughing Out Loud |
| ROTFLOL | Rolling On The Floor, Laughing Out Loud |
| CUL8R | See You Later |
| NRN | No Response Necessary |
| <G> | Grin |
| <VBG> | Very Big Grin |
If you see an abbreviation that you're not familiar with, you can usually figure it out based on context clues. Occasionally, some abbreviations may not make any sense regardless of how often you see it, and in those cases, a simple
question to the author via e-mail will yield an answer.
E-mail messages normally consist of just plain text (called ASCII text), which means that you can't italicize, bold, underline, or perform other typographical tricks to add emphasis to words or ideas. People get around this limitation by using
creative character combinations:
Again, the purpose of these different character combinations isn't to win a creativity contest. It is to add extra meaning to what you type and to reduce confusion. You'll probably come up with some more of your own with time.
A common convention used in Usenet newsgroups (more on Usenet later) is the signature file, often referred to as the sig. It's increasingly common to see signatures on person-to-person e-mail messages as well. The sig file is a simple one- to
five-line text file that tells everybody a little something about yourself. It can contain any information you want people to know about. Typically, sigs contain an e-mail address, references to home pages, and perhaps an amusing quote or cute ASCII
graphics. You can create your sig file with a generic text editor, like Windows 95's Notepad. You can then configure your e-mail program to add the sig to your outgoing messages automatically.
The term Spam may refer to small cans of spiced ham in a grocery store, but on the Internet, the term refers to the e-mail equivalent of junk mail. The speed and low cost of e-mail make it exceptionally easy to send hundreds, or thousands, of copies of
a message to recipients everywhere. It's a mass mail advertiser's dream! However, the practice is frowned upon as a serious breach of netiquette and can result in the spammer (the person who posts spam messages) being ostracized and possibly even denied
Internet access.
Some of the stringent objections to spam are rooted in the distinctly noncommercial origins of the Internet. Although the inevitable commercialization of the Internet is changing some anti-advertising attitudes, serious concerns remain about the
practice of spamming. It boils down to a problem of who is going to pay for handling a message. In traditional direct mail advertising conducted through the postal service, the sender incurs the costs of designing, printing, and mailing their materials.
It
costs the recipient nothing to receive the message (aside from the time it takes to sort through the junk mail). On the other hand, most e-mail users (or their companies), must pay (in one way or another) for the time they spend connected to the Internet
to download and read e-mail. Understandably, most users react negatively to receiving uninvited and unwanted e-mail, particularly when it is a blatantly commercial (or self-serving) message sent to a large number of recipients indiscriminately.
The security of e-mail messages is a serious concern for some people. Due to the structure of the Internet itself, there is a small, but very real, possibility that someone other than the intended recipient will intercept and read your e-mail without
your knowledge. In short, because e-mail travels along the public cabling of the Internet, any genius with lots of time on their hands could stake out a section of it and copy all the information that passes through to a file, and then review it at a
later
time. The original message will continue on its way to its destination, and there's really no way of telling if the message was copied en route. For the vast majority of e-mail traffic, it doesn't really matter if someone sneaks a peek at it along the
way.
But if a message contains credit card numbers or other sensitive information, there could be unpleasant consequences of the information falling into the wrong hands.
While the actual number of incidents of some hacker stealing e-mail from the Internet is very low, it has happened. There are methods of encrypting e-mail messages so that they are only readable by the intended recipient (such as PGP, or
"Pretty Good Privacy"). However, most people, including myself, don't bother. The chance of a particular piece of e-mail being intercepted by someone else is very low, considering that billions of e-mail messages travel through almost as
many unique routes every day.
Common sense will dictate a reasonable balance between convenience of sending information via e-mail and the security risk it entails. For instance, it would be foolish to post a message containing your credit card number on a Usenet newsgroup where it
could be freely downloaded by anyone. However, putting your credit card number in an e-mail message addressed to an individual or company you trust not to misuse it probably incurs less risk than handing your card to a waiter in a restaurant or reading
the
number to an unseen operator over the phone (especially if you are using a cordless or cellular phone that could be monitored by anyone with a radio frequency scanner). If you're dealing with trade secrets or large sums of money (the kind of thing you'd
send by bonded courier rather than regular postal mail if you were dealing with the paper counterpart), then you'll want to consider employing encryption and other methods to ensure the security of the information.
TIP
If you haven't been persuaded by my argument that the chances of someone eavesdropping on your e-mail are very small considering all the e-mail that is out there, then you will want to consider using PGP encryption. PGP is much better than its "Pretty Good Privacy" moniker suggests; most experts consider PGP about as unbreakable as widely available encryption software can be. With it, users can both verify that the sender of e-mail really is who they say they are, and that only recipients can decode and read e-mail messages encoded just for them. PGP programs are available for PCs running Windows 95, 3.1, NT, and even DOS, Macintoshes, UNIX boxes, Amigas, Atari STs, and several other computers. For information and sources for this freely available program, point Internet Explorer to the following address and follow the appropriate links:
http://draco.centerline.com:8080/~franl/pgp/
Again, I don't consider any potential security threat regarding privacy and my e-mail to be so great that I limit what I send via e-mail, but I'm not e-mailing the entry codes for Fort Knox, either.
Sending computer files along with e-mail messages is described as attaching them, which makes those files attachments. As you will learn in subsequent chapters, attaching a file to an e-mail message is a very simple process. However,
getting a file to its recipient in usable form can be problematic.
The e-mail system was designed to handle simple text messages only. In order to send binary files (any file that contains nontext data such as program code, pictures, or even word processing documents with formatting information) through the
e-mail system, they must be encoded using a protocol such as MIME or UUencode. Obviously, the recipient's e-mail program must be able to decode the attached file before it can be used. However, accessing a file attached to an incoming message is usually
the easy part—provided the sending and receiving e-mail programs support the same attachment protocol. The hard part of the process is making sure the recipient can use the file once it is delivered and separated from the e-mail message to which it
was attached.
For example, what if you send a Microsoft Word file to someone who doesn't have Word on their system? What if you use a PC, but your recipient uses a Mac? What if your recipient isn't using a modern e-mail program that will be able to deal with your
attachment? Most of these problems can be solved with a little planning, good communication with the recipient, and just being aware what problems may arise ahead of time.
The best way to plan ahead is to simply ask the recipients if they know if they can receive attachments, and if so, what sort of attachments they can use after they are transmitted. For example, if your recipient tells you he is unable to read
WordPerfect files, there is no point sending a WordPerfect file. Here are some the questions you should ask before sending attachments:
It isn't always necessary to ask all these questions whenever you send an attachment, but you should never send an attachment blindly, that is, without knowing anything about your recipient's computer setup. Sometimes you may luck out and the
attachment
might get through, but this is more the exception than the rule.
When you start building up a repartee with many people via e-mail, it may start to get difficult remembering everyone's e-mail address. Fortunately, most e-mail programs (including Internet Mail and Exchange Inbox) have a built-in address book for
keeping track of those e-mail addresses. You can easily add into your address book the names of people who send you e-mail, which makes sending e-mail back to them in the future a quicker process. In addition to storing a collection of individual e-mail
addresses, most address books will let you create lists of addresses, enabling you to send a message to everyone on the list by making a single selection from the address book.
Mailing lists are a way to extend e-mail beyond a dialog between a couple of individuals so that the discussion or flow of information reaches a whole group of people. An example of a simple mailing list in action would be using your e-mail
program's address book to send a message such as an announcement to a list of e-mail addresses composed of everyone in your department or workgroup. Now, imagine one of the recipients replying to your message and you forwarding their comment to the rest
of
the list. That's the way mailing lists work. Special software (called a mailbot), running on a server, can automate the process and make it possible to manage lists with thousands of subscribers, but the principal remains the same.
Some mailing lists provide distribution for electronic magazines and newsletters; others provide a forum for discussion on a topic of interest to the list's subscribers. Some mailing lists include just a handful of participants; others encompass
thousands of subscribers scattered around the world. There are mailing lists serving many different constituencies and they originate from nearly as many different sources. There is no central registry that controls or catalogs mailing lists. In your
travels around the Net, you'll discover mailing lists in conversations with other people who share similar interests and see announcements on Web pages and the like.
Mailing lists fall into two broad categories: moderated and unmoderated. The content of most, if not all, messages distributed through a moderated list is controlled by the owner of the list. In some cases, only the list owner can post messages
to the mailing list, thus making it a one way communication from the list owner to the subscribers. This is the typical arrangement for a mailing list that is used to distribute electronic newsletters, announcements, and such. Other moderated lists are
intended to be forums for discussions and welcome submissions from readers; however, the moderator will review messages submitted to the list before forwarding them to the other subscribers to make sure the discussion stays tightly focused on the topic
that is the subject of the mailing list. An unmoderated list, on the other hand, usually relies on one of the mailbot programs to receive any messages submitted to the list and forward them to all the addresses on the list automatically. The list
owner must set up and maintain the system, but doesn't exercise much, if any, control over the content of the messages. An unmoderated mailing list facilitates open discussions but may drift off on tangents and topics that are unrelated to the purpose for
which the list was founded.
Netiquette frowns on sending unsolicited e-mail messages, so it is unlikely that you will find yourself the recipient of messages from a mailing list unless you specifically request that your e-mail address be added to the list. The process is similar
to subscribing to a magazine or newsletter (except that mailing lists are usually free). Basically, you send an e-mail message to the list owner asking that your e-mail address be added to a particular mailing list. After your address is added, you will
begin receiving messages from the list and be able to post messages and replies (provided the list accepts submissions from subscribers).
If the mailing list is small and managed manually by a human being, you can simply send an ordinary e-mail message to the list owner. Subscribing to a mailing list managed by a mailbot is a little different. Your subscription request must be submitted
in precisely the correct form in order for it to be processed automatically by the mailbot software. You'll normally find instructions for submitting your subscription request at the same place you found out about the mailing list itself. A typical
subscription request might look like the following:
To: listserv@bigdomain.com Subject: subscribe biglist John Doe
Note that the message is addressed to the mailbot, not the human list owner, and that the subject line is blank. The body of the message contains a single line comprised of the subscribe command followed by the name of the list and the subscriber's
name. The mailbot will add the e-mail address from which the message was sent to the mailing list.
Reading messages from a mailing list is no different than reading messages from an individual. Sending and replying to messages on the mailing list also employs standard e-mail handling techniques. The only difference is that messages sent to the
mailing list will be forwarded automatically to all the other mailing list subscribers.
Actually, when replying to a message from the mailing list, you have the option of sending a public reply that will be seen by everyone on the list or sending a private e-mail message to the person who wrote the message. If you use your e-mail
software's reply command, the reply will go to the mailing list software, which will then forward your message to the entire list. If, however, you want to send a private message to the author of the message you are reading, you can do so by changing the
address of your reply. You can usually find the original author's e-mail address in the message header or signature.
Newsgroups are another extension of the basic e-mail concept. They serve much the same purpose as unmoderated mailing lists by providing a forum for open discussion. Usenet (the conventions and specifications that provide the structure of newsgroups)
is
set up in such a way that it can handle active discussions among many far-flung participants and do so more efficiently than a mailing list. Instead of sending a copy of every message to every mailing list subscriber via e-mail, newsgroup messages
(articles as they are called) are sent to a network of news servers. Users rely on newsreader software (such as Internet News) to read, post, and reply to news articles.
Usenet is organized into a hierarchical structure of distinct newsgroups. Each of the many (some 17,000 at last count) newsgroups has its own audience. The Big Seven newsgroup hierarchies are comp, misc, news, rec, sci, soc, and talk. Each of these
hierarchies covers a different general topic of discussion (see Table 10.1). All newly created Usenet newsgroups hang off of one of these main branches. Each branch is further subdivided by appropriate subcategories for each branch. This subdivision
continues until a generally accepted newsgroup name is agreed upon with each subtopic is separated by a period. For example, comp.os.ms-windows.apps.com is a newsgroup devoted to discussions of communications applications for the Microsoft Windows
operating system (reading left to right, it's computers, operating systems, Microsoft Windows, applications, communications).
NOTE
Some people will complain that the alt hierarchy isn't listed and isn't considered part of Usenet. The fact is that the alt newsgroups follow slightly different rules than the Usenet hierarchy newsgroups. Generally speaking, the alt groups contain stuff that some people might find offensive, rude, or of questionable taste. Because of this rather diverse flavor, a number of sites don't carry any alt newsgroups. The alt groups are also much easier to create than regular Usenet newsgroups. Where Usenet newsgroups require a discussion period and a voting period, alt newsgroups can be created on a whim by people in the know. By and large, however, most ISPs carry at least some of the alt newsgroups, if not all of them.
There are also local newsgroups that don't get carried by Usenet. These groups are typically aimed towards a certain region, such as a city, or a large institution, such as company or a school. These local newsgroups are generally carried by Usenet in those specific regions. It's unlikely, though not impossible, for local newsgroups to be carried outside of their specific regions. For example, the newsgroup la.jobs is meant as a place for job-related postings for the Los Angeles area. Oftentimes, this newsgroup will get messages from people out of the city or state, looking for local residents willing to relocate from L.A. Some news server software even restricts the distribution of such newsgroups.
In the grand scheme of things, the only difference between the alt and local newsgroups and Usenet's Big Seven is mainly technical. Functionally speaking, all three types of newsgroups are the same because they mostly follow the same Usenet guidelines. The problem is that the local and alt newsgroups don't follow all of the guidelines. The alt and local hierarchies are part of Usenet as a whole, but they're not a part of Usenet's Big Seven.
| Hierarchy | General Areas of Discussion |
| comp | Anything that has to do with computers |
| misc | Anything not discussed in the other hierarchies |
| news | Matters that concern Usenet |
| rec | Things people enjoy doing to relax, including sports, movies, and television |
| sci | The fields of science |
| soc | Social and societal topics |
| talk | Topics that invoke a lot of debates and discussions |
Once you understand the naming scheme for newsgroups, you can usually get a pretty good idea of the topic being discussed just by looking at the name of the newsgroup. Newsreader software such as Internet News includes a search feature
that will let you quickly scan the list of available newsgroups for key words to enable you to find a newsgroup on a topic that is of interest to you.
Before you can begin reading newsgroup articles, you must connect to a news server. Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have a news server online to give their subscribers access to a selection of Usenet newsgroups. It's rare to find an ISP that
carries all the Usenet newsgroups, but you can generally expect to find at least some of the standard Usenet newsgroups plus perhaps some newsgroups from the alt hierarchy and some local newsgroup as well.
TIP
Some people may find the newsgroup selection from their ISP to be somewhat lacking and may want to find another news server. There are a number of publicly accessible news servers around. You can find a list of them by pointing your browser to
http://www.yahoo.com/News/Usenet/Public_Access_Usenet_Sites/
In addition, some companies provide nothing but news server access. Typically these companies charge a nominal monthly fee for access to their news server.
Once you locate an interesting newsgroup, you can use your newsreader software to view the headers (subject lines) of the articles currently available in the newsgroup. If you see a header that looks interesting, you can mark it and use the newsreader
to read the articles on that subject. The newsreader will display the original article and its string of replies (called a thread) in sequence so you can follow the discussion. You can join in the discussion by replying to an article or start a discussion
of your own by posting an original article on a new subject. The process is essentially the same as using regular e-mail. We'll get into the specifics in Chapter 13.
If you find a newsgroup that you want to monitor regularly, you'll want to subscribe to that newsgroup. Unlike subscribing to a mailing list, subscribing to a newsgroup does not result in messages being sent to you automatically. Instead, subscribing
to
a newsgroup simply adds that newsgroup to a list of favorite locations maintained by your newsreader. When you want to return to the newsgroup, you can simply select it from a short list instead of repeating the search you used to locate it initially.
Usenet is much more than reading articles in newsgroups; you'll probably want to participate in the newsgroups as well. It's not as simple as putting sentences together and making your argument. You must understand the culture of Usenet and why people
behave the way they do. People writing on Usenet don't do things a particular way without reason. Although this section doesn't deal with Netscape News specifically, it does contain important information about participating in Usenet discussions.
Before you write so much as one word on Usenet, look around the newsgroup you want to post to first. Most newsgroups have something known as a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), which contains answers to questions that many people before you have asked.
If you're looking for Web sites with tons of quotes, for example, and you want to ask the question in alt.quotations, look for this newsgroup's FAQ first. If you don't see the FAQ, or you don't see your question in the FAQ, then post your question to the
newsgroup.
A number of question and answer newsgroups on Usenet are filled with people willing to help you out. One such newsgroup is news.newusers.questions, which is a great place for newbies (people new to Usenet) to get answers. These newsgroups are fairly
easy to spot by their names alone. Don't go into a movie discussion group and ask questions about how Usenet works. Not only will you probably not get the answers you want, but you'll get some people mad at you.
As much fun as it may seem to sound off in a newsgroup and start telling people just what you think, you shouldn't, at least not right away. A good rule of thumb is to lurk (just read articles) in a particular newsgroup for two weeks before
posting. Following this rule gives you a chance to see what topics are currently being discussed. Additionally, lurking for about two weeks lets you see who the major players of a newsgroup are and how they behave. By hiding out for a while, you can see
where these people's hot buttons are and how to avoid (or push) those buttons.
You haven't been insulted—you've been flamed. A flame is Usenet terminology for an insult, which is usually posted in a newsgroup or in e-mail. If you've been the recipient of a flame, try to deal with it in a calm fashion. Look at what the
person is replying to and see whether he has a good reason for flaming you. If he did, apologize about the misunderstanding; otherwise, ask him why you were flamed. Try and work with the flamer to calm him down.
When you are the recipient of a flame, it's tempting to reply in kind. But that can lead to a viscous cycle of flames called a flame war in which all meaningful discussion pretty much ends. If you see a flame war in progress, the only thing to
do
is avoid the thread. If you're one of the participants in a flame war, you probably want to prove the other person in the newsgroup is an idiot. Unfortunately, if you try to do so, the other party will probably reply with more flames. The best advice I
can
offer is, when faced with an idiot who insists on having the last word, let him! Try to just forget it and move on to other topics.
As informative and entertaining as Usenet is, a number of restrictions are built into its behavior. The way Usenet works is that most machines on the Internet periodically talk to each other and exchange e-mail and news articles. In addition to these
exchanges, most news servers queue up all outgoing messages, giving priority to the smaller messages. What this all adds up to is that your reply to an article may arrive sooner than the original article on some sites. Understanding this fact is important
not just for following threads in Usenet, but also for decoding binary files. Things beyond the poster's control sometimes cause encoded binaries that are sent out to arrive at your site all mixed up. Don't flame the poster because of this problem; just
learn to deal with it.
Netiquette is the generally accepted ways people talk and do things on Usenet. If you've hidden out in a newsgroup for a while and still think it's a good idea to post, go ahead. After reading a newsgroup for two weeks, you now know roughly how the
newsgroup ticks. If you're going to instantly jump into the fray of debating people, keep the following few bits of Netiquette in mind:
Some newsgroups welcome messages that contain pictures stored as encoded binary data similar to the file attachments in e-mail messages. Sometimes these binary pictures are so large that they won't fit in a single newsgroup article and must be split
over several articles. Internet News has the capability to decode the encoded binary data and even reassemble the binary file from pieces in several articles. The decoded binary picture file will be stored on your hard drive where you can use the
appropriate utility to view it.
There are newsgroups that cover just about any topic you can imagine (and some that you would never have thought of). Some of those newsgroups include very frank discussions of sexual topics, alternative lifestyles, violent behavior, and other topics
that some people find disturbing or offensive. There are certainly a number of newsgroups that contain material that most people would consider to be inappropriate for children.
There is not yet a rating system and set of parental controls for newsgroups, as there is for the Web. Fortunately, you're not too likely to accidentally stumble into a newsgroup that you find offensive. The newsgroup's name will give you a very good
idea of what to expect. If you're offended by jokes about lawyers, you can simply avoid a newsgroup with a name such as alt.humor.jokes.lawyer. Preventing overly inquisitive minors from deliberately seeking out inappropriate material is a different
problem. Direct parental supervision is the best solution. There are also software programs available that will intercept and prevent attempts to access certain newsgroups based on a list of proscribed sites or key words. In time, newsreaders may offer
parental controls similar to those found in Internet Explorer.
Sometimes people post messages in what is known as ROT-13 format. This format is a simple way of encrypting messages. The ROT-13 format basically works by moving each letter 13 positions down the alphabet. This simple formula means that the letter A
becomes the letter N. To enable you to view ROT-13 messages, Internet News (and many other newsreaders) includes an option that will unscramble a ROT-13 message and display it in a more readable form.
Because ROT-13 is so well known and easy to spot, you're probably wondering why people use it. It isn't used for security; people use it simply to avoid offending other people outright. You'll typically see ROT-13 messages in the humor newsgroups where
offensive jokes are sometimes posted. By using ROT-13 on such a message and giving warnings about it, the poster can prevent being flamed. ROT-13 is a very basic form of filtering out possibly offensive material. The problem with ROT-13 is that it must be
applied by the poster, who might not find the material offensive.
This chapter has given you some background on e-mail, mailing lists, and newsgroups. The following chapters show you how to use Internet Explorer's companion programs to communicate with e-mail, newsgroups, and more.
