CHAPTER 3: USENET I

3.1 THE GLOBAL WATERING HOLE

Imagine a conversation carried out over a period of hours and days, as if
people were leaving messages and responses on a bulletin board. Or
imagine the electronic equivalent of a radio talk show where everybody
can put their two cents in and no one is ever on hold.

Unlike e-mail, which is usually "one-to-one," Usenet is "many-to-many."
Usenet is the international meeting place, where people gather to meet
their friends, discuss the day's events, keep up with computer trends or
talk about whatever's on their mind. Jumping into a Usenet discussion
can be a liberating experience. Nobody knows what you look or sound
like, how old you are, what your background is. You're judged solely on
your words, your ability to make a point.

To many people, Usenet IS the Net. In fact, it is often confused with
Internet. But it is a totally separate system. All Internet sites CAN
carry Usenet, but so do many non-Internet sites, from sophisticated Unix
machines to simple bulletin-board systems running on old XT clones and
Apple IIs.

Technically, Usenet messages are shipped around the world, from host
system to host system, using one of several specific Net protocols. Your
host system stores all of its Usenet messages in one place, which
everybody with an account on the system can access. That way, no matter
how many people actually read a given message, each host system has to
store only one copy of it. Many host systems "talk" with several others
regularly to exchange messages in case one or another of their links goes
down for some reason. When two host systems connect, they basically
compare notes on which Usenet messages they already have. Any that one
is missing the other then transmits, and vice-versa. Because they are
computers, they don't mind running through thousands, even millions, of
these comparisons every day.

Yes, millions. For Usenet is huge. Every day, Usenet users pump upwards
of 100 million characters a day into the system -- nearly an
encyclopedia's worth of writing. Obviously, nobody could possibly keep up
with this immense flow of messages. Let's look at how to find
conferences and discussions of interest to you.

The basic building block of Usenet is the newsgroup, which is a
collection of messages with a related theme (on other networks, these
would be called conferences, forums, bboards or special-interest groups).
There are now more than 9,000 of these newsgroups, in several diferent
languages, covering everything from art to zoology, from science fiction
to South Africa (not all systems carry all newsgroups, however).

Some public-access systems, typically the ones that work through menus,
try to make it easier by dividing Usenet into several broad categories.
Choose one of those and you're given a list of newsgroups in that
category. Then select the newsgroup you're interested in and start
reading.

Other systems let you compile your own "reading list" so that you only
see messages in conferences you want. In both cases, conferences are
arranged in a particular hierarchy devised in the early 1980s. Newsgroup
names start with one of a series of broad topic names. For example,
newsgroups beginning with "comp." are about computer-related topics.
These broad topics are followed by a series of more focused topics (so
that "comp.unix" groups are limited to discussion about Unix). The main
hierarchies are:

bionet Research biology
bit.listserv Conferences originating as Bitnet mailing lists
biz Business
comp Computers and related subjects
misc Discussions that don't fit anywhere else
news News about Usenet itself
rec Hobbies, games and recreation
sci Science other than research biology
soc "Social" groups, often ethnically related
talk Politics and related topics
alt Controversial or unusual topics; not
carried by all sites

In addition, many host systems carry newsgroups for a particular city,
state or region. For example, ne.housing is a newsgroup where New
Englanders can look for apartments. A growing number also carry K12
newsgroups, which are aimed at elementary and secondary teachers and
students. And a number of sites carry clari newsgroups, which is
actually a commercial service consisting of wire-service stories and a
unique online computer news service (more on this in chapter 11).

3.2 NAVIGATING USENET WITH nn

How do you dive right in? As mentioned, on some systems, it's all done
through menus -- you just keep choosing from a list of choices until you
get to the newsgroup you want and then hit the "read" command. On Unix
systems, however, you will have to use a "newsreader" program. Two of
the more common ones are known as rn (for "read news") and nn (for "no
news" -- because it's supposed to be simpler to use).

For beginners, nn may be the better choice because it works with menus --
you get a list of articles in a given newsgroup and then you choose which
ones you want to see. To try it out, connect to your host system and, at
the command line, type

nn news.announce.newusers

and hit enter. After a few seconds, you should see something like this:

Newsgroup: news.announce.newusers Articles: 22 of 22/1 NEW

a Gene Spafford 776 Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
b Gene Spafford 362 A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community
c Gene Spafford 387 Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
d Gene Spafford 101 Hints on writing style for Usenet
e Gene Spafford 74 Introduction to news.announce
f Gene Spafford 367 USENET Software: History and Sources
g Gene Spafford 353 What is Usenet?
h taylor 241 A Guide to Social Newsgroups and Mailing Lists
i Gene Spafford 585 Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part I
j Gene Spafford 455 >Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part II
k David C Lawrenc 151 How to Create a New Newsgroup
l Gene Spafford 106 How to Get Information about Networks
m Gene Spafford 888 List of Active Newsgroups
n Gene Spafford 504 List of Moderators
o Gene Spafford 1051 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part I
p Gene Spafford 1123 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part II
q Gene Spafford 1193 >Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part III
r Jonathan Kamens 644 How to become a USENET site
s Jonathan Kamen 1344 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part I

-- 15:52 -- SELECT -- help:? -----Top 85%-----
Explanatory postings for new users. (Moderated)

Obviously, this is a good newsgroup to begin your exploration of Usenet!
Here's what all this means: The first letter on each line is the letter
you type to read that particular "article" (it makes sense that a
"newsgroup" would have "articles"). Next comes the name of the person
who wrote that article, followed by its length, in lines, and what the
article is about. At the bottom, you see the local time at your access
site, what you're doing right now (i.e., SELECTing articles), which key
to hit for some help (the ? key) and how many of the articles in the
newsgroup you can see on this screen. The "(moderated)" means the
newsgroup has a "moderator" who is the only one who can directly post
messages to it. This is generally limited to groups such as this, which
contain articles of basic information, or for digests, which are
basically online magazines (more on them in a bit).

Say you're particularly interested in what "Emily Postnews" has to say
about proper etiquette on Usenet. Hit your c key (lower case!), and the
line will light up. If you want to read something else, hit the key that
corresponds to it. And if you want to see what's on the next page of
articles, hit return or your space bar.

But you're impatient to get going, and you want to read that article now.
The command for that in nn is a capital Z. Hit it and you'll see
something like this:

Gene Spafford: Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on NetiquetteSep 92 04:17
Original-author: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Archive-name: emily-postnews/part1
Last-change: 30 Nov 91 by brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)

NOTE: this is intended to be satirical. If you do not recognize
it as such, consult a doctor or professional comedian. The
recommendations in this article should recognized for what
they are -- admonitions about what NOT to do.

"Dear Emily Postnews"

Emily Postnews, foremost authority on proper net behaviour,
gives her advice on how to act on the net.

============================================================================

Dear Miss Postnews: How long should my signature be? -- verbose@noisy

A: Dear Verbose: Please try and make your signature as long as you
-- 09:57 --.announce.newusers-- LAST --help:?--Top 4%--

The first few lines are the message's header, similar to the header you
get in e-mail messages. Then comes the beginning of the message. The
last line tells you the time again, the newsgroup name (or part of it,
anyway), the position in your message stack that this message occupies,
how to get help, and how much of the message is on screen. If you want
to keep reading this message, just hit your space bar (not your enter
key!) for the next screen and so on until done. When done, you'll be
returned to the newsgroup menu. For now hit Q (upper case this time),
which quits you out of nn and returns you to your host system's command
line.

To get a look at another interesting newsgroup, type

nn comp.risks

and hit enter. This newsgroup is another moderated group, this time a
digest of all the funny and frightening ways computers and the people who
run and use them can go wrong. Again, you read articles by selecting
their letters. If you're in the middle of an article and decide you want
to go onto the next one, hit your n key.

Now it's time to look for some newsgroups that might be of particular
interest to you. Unix host systems that have nn use a program called
nngrep (ever get the feeling Unix was not entirely written in English?)
that lets you scan newsgroups. Exit nn and at your host system's command
line, type

nngrep word

where word is the subject you're interested in. If you use a Macintosh
computer, you might try

nngrep mac

You'll get something that looks like this:

alt.music.machines.of.loving.grace
alt.religion.emacs
comp.binaries.mac
comp.emacs
comp.lang.forth.mac
comp.os.mach
comp.sources.mac
comp.sys.mac.announce
comp.sys.mac.apps
comp.sys.mac.comm
comp.sys.mac.databases
comp.sys.mac.digest
comp.sys.mac.games
comp.sys.mac.hardware
comp.sys.mac.hypercard
comp.sys.mac.misc
comp.sys.mac.programmer
comp.sys.mac.system
comp.sys.mac.wanted
gnu.emacs.announce
gnu.emacs.bug
gnu.emacs.gnews
gnu.emacs.gnus
gnu.emacs.help
gnu.emacs.lisp.manual
gnu.emacs.sources
gnu.emacs.vm.bug
gnu.emacs.vm.info
gnu.emacs.vms

Note that some of these obviously have something to do with Macintoshes
while some obviously do not; nngrep is not a perfect system. If you want
to get a list of ALL the newsgroups available on your host system, type

nngrep -a |more

or

nngrep -a |pg

and hit enter (which one to use depends on the Unix used on your host
system; if one doesn't do anything, try the other). You don't absolutely
need the |more or |pg, but if you don't include it, the list will keep
scrolling, rather than pausing every 24 lines. If you are in nn, hitting
a capital Y will bring up a similar list.

Typing "nn newsgroup" for every newsgroup can get awfully tiring after
awhile. When you use nn, your host system looks in a file called
.newsrc. This is basically a list of every newsgroup on the host system
along with notations on which groups and articles you have read (all
maintained by the computer). You can also use this file to create a
"reading list" that brings up each newsgroup to which you want to
"subscribe." To try it out, type

nn

without any newsgroup name, and hit enter.

Unfortunately, you will start out with a .newsrc file that has you
"subscribed" to every single newsgroup on your host system! To delete a
newsgroup from your reading list, type a capital U while its menu is on
the screen. The computer will ask you if you're sure you want to
"unsubscribe." If you then hit a Y, you'll be unsubscribed and put in
the next group.

With many host systems carrying thousands of newsgroups, this will take
you forever.

Fortunately, there are a couple of easier ways to do this. Both involve
calling up your .newsrc file in a word or text processor. In a .newsrc
file, each newsgroup takes up one line, consisting of the group's name,
an exclamation point or a colon and a range of numbers. Newsgroups with
a colon are ones to which you are subscribed; those followed by an
exclamation point are "un-subscribed." To start with a clean slate,
then, you have to change all those colons to exclamation points.

If you know how to use emacs or vi, call up the .newsrc file (you might
want to make a copy of .newsrc first, just in case), and use the search-
and-replace function to make the change.

If you're not comfortable with these text processor, you can download the
.newsrc file, make the changes on your own computer and then upload the
revised file. Before you download the file, however, you should do a
couple of things. One is to type

cp .newsrc temprc

and hit enter. You will actually download this temprc file (note the
name does not start with a period -- some computers, such as those using
MS-DOS, do not allow file names starting with periods). After you
download the file, open it in your favorite word processor and use its
search-and-replace function to change the exclamation points to colons.
Be careful not to change anything else! Save the document in ASCII or
text format. Dial back into your host system. At the command line, type

cp temprc temprc1

and hit enter. This new file will serve as your backup .newsrc file
just in case something goes wrong. Upload the temprc file from your
computer. This will overwrite the Unix system's old temprc file. Now
type

cp temprc .newsrc

and hit enter. You now have a clean slate to start creating a reading
list.

The first time you go into a newsgroup, there could be dozens, even
hundreds of articles. If you want to start from scratch, hit a capital
J. This will mark all the articles in that newsgroup as "read," so that
the next time you enter the conference, you will only see messages posted
since the last time you were there.

3.3 nn COMMANDS

To mark a specific article for reading, type the letter next to it (in lower
case). To mark a specific article and all of its responses, type the letter
and an asterisk, for example:

a*

To un-select an article, type the letter next to it (again, in lower case).

C Cancels an article (around the world) that you wrote.
Every article posted on Usenet has a unique ID number.
Hitting a capital C sends out a new message that tells host
systems that receive it to find earlier message and delete
it.

F To post a public response, or follow-up. If selected while
still on a newsgroup "page", asks you which article to
follow up. If selected while in a specific article, will
follow up that article. In either case, you'll be asked if
you want to include the original article in yours. Caution:
puts you in whatever text editor is your default.

N Goes to the next subscribed newsgroup with unread articles.

P Goes to the previous subscribed newsgroup with unread
articles.

G news.group Goes to a specific newsgroup. Can be used to subscribe to
new newsgroups. Hitting G brings up a sub-menu:

u Goes to the group and shows only un-read
articles.

a Goes to the group and shows all articles,
even ones you've already read.

s Will show you only articles with a specific
subject.

n Will show you only articles from a specific
person.

M Mails a copy of the current article to somebody. You'll be
asked for the recipient's e-mail address and whether you
want to add any comments to the article before sending it
off. As with F, puts you in the default editor.

:post Post an article. You'll be asked for the name of the group.

Q Quit, or exit, nn.

U Un-subscribe from the current newsgroup.

R Responds to an article via e-mail.

space Hitting the space bar brings up the next page of articles.

X If you have selected articles, this will show them to you
and then take you to the next subscribed newsgroup with
unread articles. If you don't have any selected articles,
it marks all articles as read and takes you to the next
unread subscribed newsgroup.

=word Finds and marks all articles in the newsgroup with a
specific word in the "subject:" line, for example:

=modem

Z Shows you selected articles immediately and then returns
you to the current newsgroup.

? Brings up a help screen.

< Goes to the previous page in the newsgroup.

> Goes to the next page in the newsgroup.

$ Goes to the last page in an article.

^ Goes to the first page in an article.

3.4 USING rn

Some folks prefer this older newsreader. If you type

rn news.announce.newusers

at your host system's command line, you'll see something like this:

******** 21 unread articles in news.announce.newusers--read now? [ynq]

If you hit your Y key, the first article will appear on your screen. If
you want to see what articles are available first, though, hit your
computer's = key and you'll get something like this:

152 Introduction to news.announce
153 A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community
154 What is Usenet?
155 Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
156 Hints on writing style for Usenet
158 Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part I
159 Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part II
160 Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
161 USENET Software: History and Sources
162 A Guide to Social Newsgroups and Mailing Lists
163 How to Get Information about Networks
164 How to Create a New Newsgroup
165 List of Active Newsgroups
166 List of Moderators
169 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part I
170 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part II
171 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part III
172 How to become a USENET site
173 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part I
174 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part II
175 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part III
End of article 158 (of 178)--what next? [npq]

Notice how the messages are in numerical order this time, and don't tell
you who sent them. Article 154 looks interesting. To read it, type in
154 and hit enter. You'll see something like this:

Article 154 (20 more) in news.announce.newusers (moderated):
From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.admin,news.answers
Subject: What is Usenet?
Date: 20 Sep 92 04:17:26 GMT
Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Lines: 353
Supersedes: <spaf-whatis_715578719@cs.purdue.edu>

Archive-name: what-is-usenet/part1
Original from: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg)
Last-change: 19 July 1992 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)

The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it is widely
misunderstood. Every day on Usenet, the "blind men and the elephant"
phenomenon is evident, in spades. In my opinion, more flame wars
arise because of a lack of understanding of the nature of Usenet than
from any other source. And consider that such flame wars arise, of
necessity, among people who are on Usenet. Imagine, then, how poorly
understood Usenet must be by those outside!

--MORE--(7%)

This time, the header looks much more like the gobbledygook you get in e-
mail messages. To keep reading, hit your space bar. If you hit your n
key (lower case), you'll go to the next message in the numerical order.

To escape rn, just keep hitting your q key (in lower case), until you get
back to the command line. Now let's set up your reading list. Because
rn uses the same .newsrc file as nn, you can use one of the search-and-
replace methods described above. Or you can do this: Type

rn

and hit enter. When the first newsgroup comes up on your screen, hit
your u key (in lower case). Hit it again, and again, and again. Or just
keep it pressed down (if your computer starts beeping, let up for a
couple of seconds). Eventually, you'll be told you're at the end of the
newsgroups, and asked what you want to do next.

Here's where you begin entering newsgroups. Type

g newsgroup

for example, g comp.sys.mac.announce) and hit enter. You'll be asked
if you want to "subscribe." Hit your y key. Now you'll be asked where
to put the newsgroup. If you want it up high in your reading list, type
a number (1, for example, would put the list at the very top of your
list); otherwise, hit a $ (yep). Then type

g next newsgroup

(for example, g comp.announce.newusers) and hit enter. Repeat until
done. This process will also set up your reading list for nn, if you
prefer that newsreader. But how do you know which newsgroups to
subscribe? Typing a lowercase l and then hitting enter will show you a
list of all available newsgroups. Again, since there could be more than
2,000 newsgroups on your system, this might not be something you want to
do. Fortunately, you can search for groups with particular words in
their names, using the l command. Typing

l mac

followed by enter, will bring up a list of newsgroups with those letters
in them (and as in nn, you will also see groups dealing with emacs and
the like, in addition to groups related to Macintosh computers). If you
find what you want, but the list looks like it will keep going on for
awhile, hit your q key until you get back to the normal rn prompts
(normally, this will only be one or two q's).

because of the vast amount of messages transmitted over Usenet,
most systems carry messages for only a few days or weeks. So if there's
a message you want to keep, you should either turn on your computer's
screen capture or save it to a file which you can later download). To
save a message as a file in rn, type

s filename

where "filename" is what you want to call the file. Hit enter. You'll be
asked if you want to save it in "mailbox format." In most cases, you
can answer with an n (which will strip off the header). The message
will now be saved to a file in your News directory (which you can access
by typing cd News and then hitting enter).

Also, some newsgroups fill up particularly quickly -- go away for a
couple of days and you'll come back to find hundreds of articles! One
way to deal with that is to mark them as "read" so that they no longer
appear on your screen. Within a newsgroup, type a lower-case c. You'l
be asked if you're sure you want to mark the current messages as "read."
assuming you are, hit y.

3.5 rn COMMANDS

Different commands are available to you in rn depending on whether you
are already in a newsgroup or reading a specific article. At any point,
typing a lowercase h will bring up a list of available commands and some
terse instructions for using them. Here are some of them:

After you've just called up rn, or within a newsgroup:

c Marks every article in a newsgroup as read (or "caught up")
so that you don't have to see them again. The system will ask
you if you are sure. Can be done either when asked if you
want to read a particular newsgroup or once in the newsgroup.

g Goes to a newsgroup, in this form:

g news.group

Use this both for going to groups to which you're already
subscribed and subscribing to new groups.

h Provides a list of available commands with terse
instructions.

l Gives a list of all available newsgroups.

p Goes to the first previous subscribed newsgroup with un-read
articles.

q Quits, or exits, rn if you have not yet gone into a newsgroup.
If you are in a newsgroup, it quits that one and brings you to
the next subscribed newsgroup.

Only within a newsgroup:

= Gives a list of all available articles in the newsgroup.

m Marks a specific article or series of articles as "un-read"
again so that you can come back to them later. Typing

1700m

and hitting enter would mark just that article as un-read.
Typing

1700-1800m

and hitting enter would mark all of those articles as un-
read.

space Brings up the next page of article listings. If already on
the last page, displays the first article in the newsgroup.

u Un-subscribe from the newsgroup.

/text/ Searches through the newsgroup for articles with a specific
word or phrase in the "subject:" line, from the current
article to the end of the newsgroup. For example,

/EFF/

would bring you to the first article with "EFF" in the
"subject:" line.

?text? The same as /text/ except it searches in reverse order from
the current article.

Only within a specific article:

e Some newsgroups consist of articles that are binary files,
typically programs or graphics images. Hitting e will convert
the ASCII characters within such an article into a file you
can then download and use or view (assuming you have the proper
computer and software). Many times, such files will be split
into several articles; just keep calling up the articles and
hitting e until done. You'll find the resulting file in your
News subdirectory.

C If you post an article and then decide it was a mistake, call
it up on your host system and hit this. The message will soon
begin disappearing on systems around the world.

F Post a public response in the newsgroup to the current
article. Includes a copy of her posting, which you can then
edit down using your host system's text editor.

f The same as above except it does not include a copy of the
original message in yours.

m Marks the current article as "un-read" so that you can come
back to it later. You do not have to type the article
number.

Control-N Brings up the first response to the article. If there is no
follow-up article, this returns you to the first unread article
in the newsgroup).

Control-P Goes to the message to which the current article is a reply.

n Goes to the next unread article in the newsgroup.

N Takes you to the next article in the newsgroup even if you've
already read it.

q Quits, or exits, the current article. Leaves you in the current
newsgroup.

R Reply, via e-mail only, to the author of the current article.
Includes a copy of his message in yours.

r The same as above, except it does not include a copy of his
article.

s file Copies the current article to a file in your News directory,
where "file" is the name of the file you want to save it to.
You'll be asked if you want to use "mailbox" format when
saving. If you answer by hitting your N key, most of the
header will not be saved.

s|mail user Mails a copy of the article to somebody. For "user" substitute
an e-mail address. Does not let you add comments to the
message first, however.

space Hitting the space bar shows the next page of the article, or, if
at the end, goes to the next un-read article.

3.6 ESSENTIAL NEWSGROUPS

With so much to choose from, everybody will likely have their own unique
Usenet reading list. But there are a few newsgroups that are
particularly of interest to newcomers. Among them:

news.announce.newusers This group consists of a series of
articles that explain various facets of
Usenet.

news.newusers.questions This is where you can ask questions
(we'll see how in a bit) about how
Usenet works.

news.announce.newsgroups Look here for information about new or
proposed newsgroups.

news.answers Contains lists of "Frequently Asked
Questions" (FAQs) and their answers from
many different newsgroups. Learn how to
fight jet lag in the FAQ from
rec.travel.air; look up answers to common
questions about Microsoft Windows in
an FAQ from comp.os.ms-windows; etc.

alt.internet.services Looking for something in particular on
the Internet? Ask here.

alt.infosystems.announce People adding new information services to
the Internet will post details here.

3.7 SPEAKING UP

"Threads" are an integral part of Usenet. When somebody posts a message,
often somebody else will respond. Soon, a thread of conversation begins.
Following these threads is relatively easy. In nn, related messages are
grouped together. In rn, when you're done with a message, you can hit
control-N to read the next related message, or followup. As you explore
Usenet, it's probably a good idea to read discussions for awhile before
you jump in. This way, you can get a feel for the particular newsgroup
-- each has its own rhythms.

Eventually, though, you'll want to speak up. There are two main ways to
do this. You join an existing conversation, or you can start a whole new
thread.

If you want to join a discussion, you have to decide if you want to
include portions of the message you are responding to in your message.
The reason to do this is so people can see what you're responding to,
just in case the original message has disappeared from their system
(remember that most Usenet messages have a short life span on the average
host system) or they can't find it.

If you're using a Unix host system, joining an existing conversation is
similar in both nn and rn: hit your F key when done with a given article
in the thread. In rn, type a small f if you don't want to include
portions of the message you're responding to; an uppercase F if you do.
In nn, type a capital F. You'll then be asked if you want to include
portions of the original message.

And here's where you hit another Unix wall. When you hit your F key,
your host system calls up its basic Unix text editor. If you're lucky,
that'll be pico, a very easy system. More likely, however, you'll get
dumped into emacs (or possibly vi), which you've already met in the
chapter on e-mail.

The single most important emacs command is

control-x control-c

This means, depress your control key and hit x. Then depress the control
key and hit c. Memorize this. In fact, it's so important, it bears
repeating:

control-x control-c

These keystrokes are how you get out of emacs. If they work well, you'll
be asked if you want to send, edit, abort or list the message you were
working on. If they don't work well (say you accidentally hit some other
weird key combination that means something special to emacs) and nothing
seems to happen, or you just get more weird-looking emacs prompts on the
bottom of your screen, try hitting control-g. This should stop whatever
emacs was trying to do (you should see the word "quit" on the bottom of
your screen), after which you can hit control-x control-c. But if this
still doesn't work, remember that you can always disconnect and dial back
in!

If you have told your newsreader you do want to include portions of the
original message in yours, it will automatically put the entire thing at
the top of your message. Use the arrow keys to move down to the lines
you want to delete and hit control-K, which will delete one line at a
time.

You can then write your message. Remember that you have to hit enter
before your cursor gets to the end of the line, because emacs does not
have word wrapping.

When done, hit control-X control-C. You'll be asked the question about
sending, editing, aborting, etc. Chose one. If you hit Y, your host
system will start the process to sending your message across the Net.

The nn and rn programs work differently when it comes to posting entirely
new messages. In nn, type

:post

and hit enter in any newsgroup. You'll be asked which newsgroup to
post a message to. Type in its name and hit enter. Then you'll be
asked for "keywords." These are words you'd use to attract somebody
scanning a newsgroup. Say you're selling your car. You might type
the type of car here. Next comes a "summary" line, which is somewhat
similar. Finally, you'll be asked for the message's "distribution."
This is where you put how widely you want your message disseminated.
Think about this one for a second. If you are selling your car, it
makes little sense to send a message about it all over the world. But
if you want to talk about the environment, it might make a lot of
sense. Each host system has its own set of distribution
classifications, but there's generally a local one (just for users of
that system), one for the city, state or region it's in, another for
the country (for example, usa), one for the continent (for Americans
and Canadians, na) and finally, one for the entire world (usually:
world).

Which one to use? Generally, a couple of seconds' thought will help you
decide. If you're selling your car, use your city or regional
distribution -- people in Australia won't much care and may even get
annoyed. If you want to discuss presidential politics, using a USA
distribution makes more sense. If you want to talk about events in the
Middle East, sending your message to the entire world is perfectly
acceptable. One caveat: these rules are not absolute, some systems pick
up messages from all over, regardless of the distribution you've set, so
don't be surprised if, sooner or later, you get a response to a "local"
message from several thousand miles away.

Then you can type your message. If you've composed your message
offline (generally a good idea if you and emacs don't get along), you
can upload it now. You may see a lot of weird looking characters as
it uploads into emacs, but those will disappear when you hit control-X
and then control-C. Alternately: "save" the message (for example, by
hitting m in rn), log out, compose your message offline, log back on and
upload your message into a file on your host system. Then call up
Usenet, find the article you "saved." Start a reply, and you'll be asked
if you want to include a prepared message. Type in the name of the file
you just created and hit enter.

In rn, you have to wait until you get to the end of a newsgroup to hit F,
which will bring up a message-composing system. Alternately, at your
host system's command line, you can type

Pnews

and hit enter. You'll be prompted somewhat similarly to the nn
system, except that you'll be given a list of possible distributions.
If you chose "world," you'll get this message:

This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire
civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of
dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what you are doing.

Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny]

Don't worry -- your message won't really cost the Net untold amounts,
although, again, it's a good idea to think for a second whether your
message really should go everywhere.

If you want to respond to a given post through e-mail, instead of
publicly, hit R in nn or r or R in rn. In rn, as with follow-up
articles, the upper-case key includes the original message in yours.

Most newsgroups are unmoderated, which means that every message you post
will eventually wind up on every host system within the geographic region
you specified that carries that newsgroup.

Some newsgroups, however, are moderated, as you saw earlier with
comp.risks. In these groups, messages are shipped to a single location
where a moderator, acting much like a magazine editor, decides what
actually gets posted. In some cases, groups are moderated like scholarly
journals. In other cases, it's to try to cut down on the massive number
of messages that might otherwise be posted.

You'll notice that many articles in Usenet end with a fancy "signature"
that often contains some witty saying, a clever drawing and, almost
incidentally, the poster's name and e-mail address. You too can have
your own "signature" automatically appended to everything you post. On
your own computer, create a signature file. Try to keep it to four lines
or less, lest you annoy others on the Net. Then, while

connected to your host system, at the prompt, type

cat>.signature

and hit enter (note the period before the s). Upload your signature
file into this using your communications software's ASCII upload
protocol. When done, hit control-D, the Unix command for closing a
file. Now, every time you post a message, this will be appended to it.

There are a few caveats to posting. Usenet is no different from a Town
Meeting or publication: you're not supposed to break the law, whether
that's posting copyrighted material or engaging in illegal activities.
It is also not a place to try to sell products (except in certain biz.
and for-sale newsgroups).

3.8 CROSS-POSTING

Sometimes, you'll have an issue you think should be discussed in more
than one Usenet newsgroup. Rather than posting individual messages in
each group, you can post the same message in several groups at once,
through a process known as cross-posting.

Say you want to start a discussion about the political ramifications of
importing rare tropical fish from Brazil. People who read rec.aquaria
might have something to say. So might people who read
alt.politics.animals and talk.politics.misc.

Cross-posting is easy. It also should mean that people on other systems
who subscribe to several newsgroups will see your message only once,
rather than several times -- news-reading software can cancel out the
other copies once a person has read the message. When you get ready to
post a message (whether through Pnews for rn or the :post command in nn),
you'll be asked in which newsgroups. Type the names of the various
groups, separated by a comma, but no space, for example:

rec.aquaria,alt.politics.animals,talk.politics.misc

and hit enter. After answering the other questions (geographic
distribution, etc.), the message will be posted in the various
groups (unless one of the groups is moderated, in which case the
message goes to the moderator, who decides whether to make it public).

It's considered bad form to post to an excessive number of newsgroups, or
inappropriate newsgroups. Probably, you don't really have to post
something in 20 different places. And while you may think your
particular political issue is vitally important to the fate of the world,
chances are the readers of rec.arts.comics will not, or at least not
important enough to impose on them. You'll get a lot of nasty e-mail
messages demanding you restrict your messages to the "appropriate"
newsgroups.