Newsgroup Basics

Usenet newsgroups are an often-overlooked service that is offered as part of your Internet service. Usenet groups act as discussion forums for a wide variety of topics, and occasionally carry other material as well. The primary difference between Usenet groups and discussion forums (like our Discussion Forums on the Start Page) is that Usenet groups are accessible by the general public around the entire world, often without any restrictions.

Newsgroups consist of text messages grouped under specific categories. To view newsgroups, you may use a dedicated news reader program such as Free Agent newsreader for Windows and Newswatcher for Macintosh. Your current E-Mail program may include news reader functionality, including Netscape's built-in Messenger and Microsoft's Outlook Express.

The particular news reader software that you use is often a personal choice of which program best fits your needs. Here are some helpful links to sites with related information:

• Newsreaders.com - Macintosh and OpenStep/Rhapsody newsreaders
• Newsreaders.com - Windows newsreaders
• Tucows - Windows News Readers

Before posting messages to any newsgroups, however, you should take some time to become familiar with the newsgroup you intend to post to. Many groups have formal guidelines which describe what is (and is not) appropriate within the group, which are called charters. Also, while pictures, sounds, and video may be transferred over Usenet, such materials are frowned upon outside of the alt.binaries newsgroups.

For more information about newsgroup etiquette, please refer to section 3.1 of our Netiquette Guide.

If you have questions about newsgroups, we recommend reading the following document in our Internet FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions):

  Answers to Common Questions About the USENET Newsgroups

After opening your E-Mail program, you will need to tell the program the location of the newsgroup server. Often times, this is done when you originally set up your E-Mail program. If not, simply click on "Edit" and then "Preferences" from the drop down menu.

The "preferences" window appears.

Now click on "Newsgroup Servers" in the left column. Next, click the "add" button on the right. In the new window that pops up, type in news.core.com and click the "OK" button.

When you go back to your E-Mail program, you will now see a folder called "news", which is your newsgroup (it may also show news.core.com). Right click on the name, and choose "subscribe". This will open a new "subscribe" window, which is shown below.

Click on the "New" tab for the newsgroup listings. It may take several minutes for the list to download. Next, click on the "All" tab. Newsgroups have a hierarchical naming architecture, with 8 primary prefixes, "alt" being the most popular. For this lesson, let's choose "alt".

After clicking on the "alt" prefix, thousands of categories are listed. Scroll down the list to find a topic that interests you. Double click on the topic name, then click the "subscribe" button on the right side of the window. Close the "subscribe" window.

Now go back to your E-Mail program and you will see the topic you selected listed under the newsgroup. By clicking on the topic, all the "posts" to that specific newsgroup will appear as if they were new E-Mail messages. When you click on a message, the contents of the message appear in the reader pane as shown in the image below.

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