Contents |
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| Don't Spam | Spamming means to send out unsolicited mail or postings to lots of people (usually advertising of some sort or chain letters). |
| Read the FAQs | Many newsgroups maintain a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list for newcomers. Many people have the same problems and want to ask the same questions. If you don't bother to read the FAQs and ask a question off it, you are liable to be ridiculed. Do yourself a favor and read it first, if you are planning to ask a question. |
| Don't Quote
Too Much |
When replying to someone's post, only quote the relevant part to which you are replying. Don't quote the entire message. |
| Think Before
Replying |
It is important not to respond to a message with an emotional outburst. Cool down first, and think carefully about your reply, if it has really pushed your buttons. This message may be read all over the world, you want to come out looking good. |
| Please Don't Shout | We have a convention: typing in ALL CAPS for emphasis is considered "shouting", and can be reacted to the same as if you were shouting at someone in the same room. Using asterisks for *emphasis* is the way to go. |
| Smile if You Must | Smileys are text characters that are typed together to make faces. Too much use is annoying, so be discrete ;) . |
Other advice can be found in the Surfing Lessons of Wadsworth's Virtual Society.
Selecting a Forum | The
first step is to go to groups.google.com
with your browser. You can do it by simply clicking the link in the previous
sentence. (Hyperlinks make web navigation easy. :-)
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| Google provides a lot of background information and help for using this system. Take a look at http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/help.html At the main Groups page , you should see a list of newsgroup master categories (see screen shot at righ).. Let's pick comp. as our category and click on it. |
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This gets us to the first comp(uters) page, where the list of subcategories begins. (At the present time, there are 96 subcategories listed on two pages.) The listing includes:
Let's take a look in comp.internet and see what it offers... |
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There are only two subgroups here, comp.internet.library (with low activity) and comp.internet.net-happenings (with high activity):
But there are also threads that are part of the general comp.internet group: in fact, there were about 1,260 at the time this is being written.
So you now need to choose whether to go into one of the two subgroups, or investigate the threads at this level. For now, let's explore a thread.These may well be different when you reach this spot - Usenet is still expanding, though not nearly as fast as the World Wide Web. |
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Selecting
a Thread I've chosen a thread called, "Codes for Countries". When I click I see a screen looking like this:
Here's the layout of the window:
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Contributing to a Discussion If you follow the net etiquette tips at the beginning of this module, don't ask any questions already answered on their FAQ page, and don't deliberately try to provoke anyone, you should now be ready to join in a newsgroup discussion.
For this assignment, post at least one contribution to a discussion. Email your instructor with:
Submitting Your Work To show your instructor what you have done, and to get credit for this assignment, please email the following information to your instructor:
Audience: This
is for people who have learned about Internet newsgroups (module NA20h),
know how to use a Web browser (module NG20h),
and want to get acquainted with newsgroups first-hand.
Objectives: When you successfully complete this lesson,
you will be able to...
About this document...
Module NA21h: This document is part
of a modular instruction series in Computer Information Systems. For more information,
see the overview
or the list of modules in this series, NA: Internet Applications.
This document has been used in the following classes:
where the
amount of green indicates how often answers are posted. 
