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by Steve Burnett
With the explosive growth of the Internet, Usenet news has attracted lots of attention. Many online services now offer access to Usenet. But what’s Usenet? Usenet—short for User Network—is a proto-network of machines that exchange information grouped into subject hierarchies. The term proto-network is used because Usenet isn’t a physical network in the normal sense. It’s made up of all the computers that exchange Usenet news.
In the simplest definition, Usenet news, netnews, or simply news is a forum for online discussion. Many computers around the world exchange chunks of information, called articles, on almost every subject imaginable. These computers aren’t physically connected to the same network; they’re logically connected in their capability to exchange data. Thus, they form the logical network referred to as Usenet. In this chapter, the terms Usenet, news, and netnews are used interchangeably.
NOTE: The software that drives Usenet is divided into two parts: news readers (the software that users use to read and post news articles) and the software that processes articles and transfers them between systems.
Many people initially think of a PC bulletin board system (BBS) when trying to understand Usenet. Although Usenet news does bear some similarity to a BBS at first glance, there are very substantial and important differences:
In general, Usenet news is divided into two logical parts: the programs and protocols that make up the mechanism for posting articles and transferring news articles between computers, and the user programs for reading and posting news articles. This chapter deals primarily with the user portion.
Usenet news has its own structure and culture, which are discussed later in the section “Usenet Culture.” Usenet also has a terminology all its own. These “buzzwords” tend to confuse new users, especially those who use BBS systems. Table 34.1 is a brief glossary of common terms found on Usenet.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| article | A single message posted to a newsgroup. |
| bandwidth | An engineering term referring to the amount of data a given transmission medium can hold. Commonly used as in the phrase waste of bandwidth for articles that contain little useful information. |
| BTW | Acronym for By the Way. |
| FAQ | An acronym for the Frequently Asked Questions list. Many newsgroups have a FAQ that they post on a regular basis. It’s usually considered impolite to post a question to which the answer is in the FAQ for a group. |
| flame | An article that’s full of rude, angry, insulting statements directed at another person. |
| FYI | Acronym for For Your Information. |
| hierarchy | Usenet’s system of grouping newsgroups into a tree structure based on subject. |
| IMHO | Stands for In My Humble Opinion. |
| newsgroup | A logical group of articles that are about one general subject. |
| news reader | A user program, such as rn, that’s used to read and post articles to Usenet. |
| net.personality | Someone who’s famous within the Usenet or Internet community. |
| net.police | A mythical organization responsible for enforcing the rules on Usenet. Typically used as sarcasm. |
| netiquette | The etiquette of Usenet. |
| newbie | Someone who’s new to using Usenet news. |
| quoting | Including parts of a message to which you’re responding. Most news readers allow you to quote articles. You should quote only relevant portions of an article to save bandwidth. Sometimes also referred to as quotebacks. |
| ROFL | Acronym for Rolling On the Floor, Laughing. |
| RTFM | An acronym for Read The Forgotten Manual. Typically used as in “Here’s a short answer to your question. RTFM for more info.” |
| post | To submit an article to a newsgroup. |
| signal-to-noise | Engineering term referring to the ratio of the amount of data to the amount of background noise. On Usenet, it refers to how much useful information is in a newsgroup versus the amount of off-topic background chatter. A high signal-to-noise ratio refers to a newsgroup that has lots of useful information and very little off-topic chatter. Signal-to-noise can also be used as a descriptive for a specific person. |
| signature | A short file that’s included at the end of all your posts. Typically includes your name, e-mail address, and possibly a witty quote of some sort. |
| sig file | See signature. |
| smileys | Common symbols for denoting emotion in a post or e-mail message. For example, :-) and :-( are a happy face and a sad face. (Tilt your head toward your left shoulder and look at them sideways.) |
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