A USENET PRIMER

1998, Christian Sauvé

 

[This is a work-in-progress. Send suggestions!]

0. USENET? HUH?

Before there was a Web, before there was AOL, the Internet primarily consisted of four things: Telnet, FTP, Newsgroups and E-Mail. Of those four, E-Mail is unquestionably the medium that survived the Net's web-driven metamorphosis. FTP is more or less irrelevant given the capacities of today's browser (and deservedly so; I never liked the command-line FTP commands). Telnet is now the province of the hard-core veterans. (I use it every day to connect to my provider: because it's text-only, it's also blazingly fast.)

But while Newsgroups (not only "news", please!) continue to thrive today, it seems like even the most avid newer web-maniacs seem reluctant to see what news are all about. And that's a shame, because newsgroups are at least as interesting as web sites, and sometimes even more so.

This document is written for two audiences: The first one is referred-to in the last paragraphs: Web afficiondaccios who should really start reading newsgroups. To these, I'll try to show the basics, potential and wealth of information and opinion available on Usenet.

The second audience is slightly more familiar with the net. To these people, I will try to pass on a few hard-earned tips of the peculiar nature of Usenet sociology.

Who am I to pontificate like that? Depends. If you look up my profile in what has become the standard Web-based archive for Usenet, DejaNews, you won't find anything very revealing. A few trivial messages here and there in mostly inconsequential newsgroups. No matter; I'm someone who like to read rather than to post. But I've been reading since early 1993. You can say that I've seen a few things since then.

More concretely, I was the main proponent behind the creation of the small national newsgroup can.arts.sf during the summer of 1997. (I also created the temporary local newsgroup uottawa.csi.csi4503 and once created a Win95 newsreader, but those are different stories.)

1. WHAT IS USENET?

Usenet is not the Internet, nor is the Internet obviously not Usenet.

When I first started explaining to people what was Usenet, back in 1993, I was using the bulletin board analogy. But since you're using the Web, chances are that you're most familiar with E-Mail, so here goes:

Imagine a mailbox full of hundred of messages on the same subject. Then imagine that everyone is able to read all messages. Finally, imagine thousands of these mailboxes to choose from, on almost every imaginable subject. That is Usenet: Thousands of text-only messages, on more-or-less specific subjects, all available to everyone.

Some sites carry newsgroups, some can't afford the massive disk space overhead this implies (total Usenet traffic is several megabytes per day, and that's not including the newsgroups that specialize in large binary files.) and some carry only a subselection of groups. (Actually, given the global-to-local nature of Usenet, no site carries all newsgroups. But some are much more restrictive that others.) You can always check your site by clicking on this link: news.announce.newuser (If it doesn't work, it's either because your browser is improperly configured, or your site does not carry news. In either case, contact your news administrator.)

The beauty of the system is that it's completely different from the Web. WWW sites are based in one place; one physical machine with one copy of the pages is sitting somewhere in the world. Nuke the machine, and there's no more site. With Usenet, the compactness of text lets users send messages on thousands of separate machines, the news host that the users (you) will use. Usenet is completely parallel, decentralized, distributed. Modern thriller heroes should post their revelations on Usenet instead of sending them to the newspapers.

Almost all subject, from the tame to the awful, are covered on Usenet. If you've got an interest in something, chances are that a newsgroup exists somewhere to talk about it. (if not, you'll probably be able to create the missing newsgroup. But that's another essay entirely)

The value of newsgroups lies in their quasi-immediacy. The messages you post can be read almost instantly by other users. They will stay on the system for a few days. This makes Usenet an ideal medium for rapidly changing subjects. Since most Usenet users read a small number of selected newsgroups (they're "subscribed" to newsgroups), news in the subjects they're interested are likely to be read quickly. Best of all, you don't need HTML coding skills, access to a Web server or the ability to post stuff on the web to say something on Usenet. Just type your message like an e-mail, and off it goes!

Not surprisingly, Usenet has lately become the leading medium for opinions. We'll see later the good and bad side of this.

I will leave the technical side of the process to your local newsmaster. The remainder will be left to you: explore Usenet, try different newsgroups, look around a little. Communities form fairly quickly around newsgroups. Maybe you'll feel left out at the beginning, but hang on and you may even find friends around.

2. USENET ADVICE

In more than five years of Usenet lurking (InstaDef: A lurker reads but seldom posts. It's not a pejorative term.), I have learned a few things. Here are a few of them:

Golden Rules:

Seasonal Tips:

Flame Wars:

Grammatical Exactitude:

Criticism:

Annoyances:

Good Usenetship: