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USENET - NEWSGROUPSUsenet comes from User's Net. It's origin was as an academic network, through which students had managed to connect their university machines and interchange messages publicly. In this way they avoided having to send messages to every user individually. Usenet was an independent network from the Internet until it came to use the Internet and its protocols. Usenet is the network that works with Newsgroups.
There are more than 20.000 public news groups that have become international discussion forums, used by over 24 million users around the world. There are new groups being born because there is interest in a new area just as some disappear because the users don't follow up on a subject. Newsgroups have immense value. One can send a question to the group, and in a few hours, or maybe minutes, you could receive many replies. Users involved in a group have a keen interest in the subject, and there are always experts willing to help. In order to access a Newsgroup you need a newsreader, an application that will download and organize the messages of the News Server. Nowadays e-mail software is used for newsgroups too. You must setup the software for it to access and search new messages when you connect to a server. The messages are organized in threads. Someone begins by sending a message about a certain subject, and if others reply, the answers keep adding below the original message forming a thread. If one wishes to, a thread can be marked as read and it will not show up again. There are eight main categories of News, although you will find many others:
If you wish to find Newsgroups you can try: Liszt http://www.liszt.com/news Tile.net http://www.tile.net/news Remember to read the FAQ's in the Group. These are the frequently asked questions that have been made regarding the group that can be accessed in order to learn the Netiquette (rules of behaviour) and all the general questions people have asked themselves when they began using the system. This will avoid the same questions being asked over and over in the group. You will be admired if you read the FAQ's and then send an intelligent question or answer. Don't waste others' time by sending messages of 'me too'. This takes up space and doesn't add anything to the discussion. Rather send a message to the particular sender of the message, who will surely be happy to receive the acknowledgement. It is advisable to read for a for a while when you first enter a group. In this way you learn how that group works.
SEARCH ON USENET
Many times you want to make a search on the Web but you can't find what you are looking for. This happens often with searches which one could put in a phrase. For example: What is a chalazion? It is probable that Usenet users have already discussed the subject and you can make Web searches on Usenet archives. Two very useful ones are: From these pages you can enter keywords as if you were using a search engine. Good luck!
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