Date: Fri, 31 Mar 95 13:35:07 -0500 To: krshnbtt@acf2.NYU.EDU Subject: (fwd) A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions Organization: Science Applications International Corporation Sender: news@baccus.itl.saic.com Approved: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes) Archive-name: usenet/primer/part1 Original-author: chuq@apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) Comment: enhanced & edited until 5/93 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) Last-change: 29 Jan 1995 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes) Changes-posted-to: news.misc,news.answers A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community Chuq Von Rospach *** This message describes the Usenet culture and customs that have developed over time. Other documents in this newsgroup describe what Usenet is and manuals or on-line help on your system should provide detailed technical documentation. All new users should read this message to acclimate themselves to Usenet. (Old users could read it, too, to refresh their memories.) *** It is the people participating in Usenet that make it worth the effort to read and maintain; for Usenet to function properly those people must be able to interact in productive ways. This document is intended as a guide to using the net in ways that will be pleasant and productive for everyone. This document is not intended to teach you how to use Usenet. Instead, it is a guide to using it politely, effectively and efficiently. Communication by computer is new to almost everybody, and there are certain aspects that can make it a frustrating experience until you get used to them. This document should help you avoid the worst traps. The easiest way to learn how to use Usenet is to watch how others use it. Start reading the news and try to figure out what people are doing and why. After a couple of weeks you will start understanding why certain things are done and what things shouldn't be done. There are documents available describing the technical details of how to use the software. These are different depending on which programs you use to access the news. You can get copies of these from your system administrator. If you do not know who that person is, they can be contacted on most systems by mailing to account "news", "usenet" or "postmaster". Never Forget that the Person on the Other Side is Human. Because your interaction with the network is through a computer it is easy to forget that there are people "out there." Situations arise where emotions erupt into a verbal free-for-all that can lead to hurt feelings. Please remember that people all over the world are reading your words. Do not attack people if you cannot persuade them with your presentation of the facts. Screaming, cursing, and abusing others only serves to make people think less of you and less willing to help you when you need it. If you are upset at something or someone, wait until you have had a chance to calm down and think about it. A cup of (decaf!) coffee or a good night's sleep works wonders on your perspective. Hasty words create more problems than they solve. Try not to say anything to others you would not say to them in person in a room full of people. Don't Blame System Admins for their Users' Behavior. Sometimes, you may find it necessary to write to a system administrator about something concerning his or her site. Maybe it is a case of the software not working, or a control message escaped, or maybe one of the users at that site has done something you feel requires comment. No matter how steamed you may be, be polite to the sysadmin -- he or she may not have any idea of what you are going to say, and may not have any part in the incidents involved. By being civil and temperate, you are more likely to obtain their courteous attention and assistance. Never assume that a person is speaking for their organization. Many people who post to Usenet do so from machines at their office or school. Despite that, never assume that the person is speaking for the organization that they are posting their articles from (unless the person explicitly says so). Some people put explicit disclaimers to this effect in their messages, but this is a good general rule. If you find an article offensive, consider taking it up with the person directly, or ignoring it. Learn about "kill files" in your newsreader, and other techniques for ignoring people whose postings you find offensive. Be Careful What You Say About Others. Please remember -- you read netnews; so do as many as 3,000,000 other people. This group quite possibly includes your boss, your friend's boss, your girl friend's brother's best friend and one of your father's beer buddies. Information posted on the net can come back to haunt you or the person you are talking about. Think twice before you post personal information about yourself or others. This applies especially strongly to groups like soc.singles and alt.sex but even postings in groups like talk.politics.misc have included information about the personal life of third parties that could get them into serious trouble if it got into the wrong hands. Be Brief. Never say in ten words what you can say in fewer. Say it succinctly and it will have a greater impact. Remember that the longer you make your article, the fewer people will bother to read it. Your Postings Reflect Upon You -- Be Proud of Them. Most people on Usenet will know you only by what you say and how well you say it. They may someday be your co-workers or friends. Take some time to make sure each posting is something that will not embarrass you later. Minimize your spelling errors and make sure that the article is easy to read and understand. Writing is an art and to do it well requires practice. Since much of how people judge you on the net is based on your writing, such time is well spent. Use Descriptive Titles. The subject line of an article is there to enable a person with a limited amount of time to decide whether or not to read your article. Tell people what the article is about before they read it. A title like "Car for Sale" to rec.autos does not help as much as "66 MG Midget for sale: Beaverton OR." Don't expect people to read your article to find out what it is about because many of them won't bother. Some sites truncate the length of the subject line to 40 characters so keep your subjects short and to the point. Think About Your Audience. When you post an article, think about the people you are trying to reach. Asking UNIX(*) questions on rec.autos will not reach as many of the people you want to reach as if you asked them on comp.unix.questions or comp.unix.internals. Try to get the most appropriate audience for your message, not the widest. It is considered bad form to post both to misc.misc, soc.net-people, or misc.wanted and to some other newsgroup. If it belongs in that other newsgroup, it does not belong in misc.misc, soc.net-people, or misc.wanted. If your message is of interest to a limited geographic area (apartments, car sales, meetings, concerts, etc...), restrict the distribution of the message to your local area. Some areas have special newsgroups with geographical limitations, and the recent versions of the news software allow you to limit the distribution of material sent to world-wide newsgroups. Check with your system administrator to see what newsgroups are available and how to use them. If you want to try a test of something, do not use a world-wide newsgroup! Messages in misc.misc that say "This is a test" are likely to cause large numbers of caustic messages to flow into your mailbox. There are newsgroups that are local to your computer or area that should be used. Your system administrator can tell you what they are. Be familiar with the group you are posting to before you post! You shouldn't post to groups you do not read, or post to groups you've only read a few articles from -- you may not be familiar with the on-going conventions and themes of the group. One normally does not join a conversation by just walking up and talking. Instead, you listen first and then join in if you have something pertinent to contribute. Be Careful with Humor and Sarcasm. Without the voice inflections and body language of personal communications, it is easy for a remark meant to be funny to be misinterpreted. Subtle humor tends to get lost, so take steps to make sure that people realize you are trying to be funny. The net has developed a symbol called the smiley face. It looks like ":-)" and points out sections of articles with humorous intent. No matter how broad the humor or satire, it is safer to remind people that you are being funny. But also be aware that quite frequently satire is posted without any explicit indications. If an article outrages you strongly, you should ask yourself if it just may have been unmarked satire. Several self-proclaimed connoisseurs refuse to use smiley faces, so take heed or you may make a temporary fool of yourself. Only Post a Message Once. Avoid posting messages to more than one newsgroup unless you are sure it is appropriate. If you do post to multiple newsgroups, do not post to each group separately. Instead, specify all the groups on a single copy of the message. This reduces network overhead and lets people who subscribe to more than one of those groups see the message once instead of having to wade through each copy. Please Rotate Messages With Questionable Content. Certain newsgroups (such as rec.humor) have messages in them that may be offensive to some people. To make sure that these messages are not read unless they are explicitly requested, these messages should be encrypted. The standard encryption method is to rotate each letter by thirteen characters so that an "a" becomes an "n". This is known on the network as "rot13" and when you rotate a message the word "rot13" should be in the "Subject:" line. Most of the software used to read Usenet articles have some way of encrypting and decrypting messages. Your system administrator can tell you how the software on your system works, or you can use the Unix command tr '[a-m][n-z][A-M][N-Z]' '[n-z][a-m][N-Z][A-M]' Don't forget the single quotes!) Summarize What You are Following Up. When you are following up someone's article, please summarize the parts of the article to which you are responding. This allows readers to appreciate your comments rather than trying to remember what the original article said. It is also possible for your response to get to some sites before the original article. Summarization is best done by including appropriate quotes from the original article. Do not include the entire article since it will irritate the people who have already seen it. Even if you are responding to the entire article, summarize only the major points you are discussing. When Summarizing, Summarize! When you request information from the network, it is common courtesy to report your findings so that others can benefit as well. The best way of doing this is to take all the responses that you received and edit them into a single article that is posted to the places where you originally posted your question. Take the time to strip headers, combine duplicate information, and write a short summary. Try to credit the information to the people that sent it to you, where possible. Use Mail, Don't Post a Follow-up. One of the biggest problems we have on the network is that when someone asks a question, many people send out identical answers. When this happens, dozens of identical answers pour through the net. Mail your answer to the person and suggest that they summarize to the network. This way the net will only see a single copy of the answers, no matter how many people answer the question. If you post a question, please remind people to send you the answers by mail and at least offer to summarize them to the network. Read All Follow-ups and Don't Repeat What Has Already Been Said. Before you submit a follow-up to a message, read the rest of the messages in the newsgroup to see whether someone has already said what you want to say. If someone has, don't repeat it. Check the Headers When Following Up. The news software has provisions to specify that follow-ups to an article should go to a specific set of newsgroups -- possibly different from the newsgroups to which the original article was posted. Sometimes the groups chosen for follow-ups are totally inappropriate, especially as a thread of discussion changes with repeated postings. You should carefully check the groups and distributions given in the header and edit them as appropriate. If you change the groups named in the header, or if you direct follow-ups to a particular group, say so in the body of the message -- not everyone reads the headers of postings. Be Careful About Copyrights and Licenses. Once something is posted onto the network, it is *probably* in the public domain unless you own the appropriate rights (most notably, if you wrote the thing yourself) and you post it with a valid copyright notice; a court would have to decide the specifics and there are arguments for both sides of the issue. Now that the US has ratified the Berne convention, the issue is even murkier (if you are a poster in the US). For all practical purposes, though, assume that you effectively give up the copyright if you don't put in a notice. Of course, the *information* becomes public, so you mustn't post trade secrets that way. When posting material to the network, keep in mind that material that is UNIX-related may be restricted by the license you or your company signed with AT&T and be careful not to violate it. You should also be aware that posting movie reviews, song lyrics, or anything else published under a copyright could cause you, your company, or members of the net community to be held liable for damages, so we highly recommend caution in using this material. Cite Appropriate References. If you are using facts to support a cause, state where they came from. Don't take someone else's ideas and use them as your own. You don't want someone pretending that your ideas are theirs; show them the same respect. Mark or Rotate Answers and Spoilers. When you post something (like a movie review that discusses a detail of the plot) which might spoil a surprise for other people, please mark your message with a warning so that they can skip the message. Another alternative would be to use the "rot13" protocol to encrypt the message so it cannot be read accidentally. When you post a message with a spoiler in it make sure the word "spoiler" is part of the "Subject:" line. Spelling Flames Considered Harmful. Every few months a plague descends on Usenet called the spelling flame. It starts out when someone posts an article correcting the spelling or grammar in some article. The immediate result seems to be for everyone on the net to turn into a 6th grade English teacher and pick apart each other's postings for a few weeks. This is not productive and tends to cause people who used to be friends to get angry with each other. It is important to remember that we all make mistakes, and that there are many users on the net who use English as a second language. There are also a number of people who suffer from dyslexia and who have difficulty noticing their spelling mistakes. If you feel that you must make a comment on the quality of a posting, please do so by mail, not on the network. Don't Overdo Signatures. Signatures are nice, and many people can have a signature added to their postings automatically by placing it in a file called "$HOME/.signature". Don't overdo it. Signatures can tell the world something about you, but keep them short. A signature that is longer than the message itself is considered to be in bad taste. The main purpose of a signature is to help people locate you, not to tell your life story. Every signature should include at least your return address relative to a major, known site on the network and a proper domain-format address. Your system administrator can give this to you. Some news posters attempt to enforce a 4 line limit on signature files -- an amount that should be more than sufficient to provide a return address and attribution. Limit Line Length and Avoid Control Characters. Try to keep your text in a generic format. Many (if not most) of the people reading Usenet do so from 80 column terminals or from workstations with 80 column terminal windows. Try to keep your lines of text to less than 80 characters for optimal readability. If people quote part of your article in a followup, short lines will probably show up better, too. Also realize that there are many, many different forms of terminals in use. If you enter special control characters in your message, it may result in your message being unreadable on some terminal types; a character sequence that causes reverse video on your screen may result in a keyboard lock and graphics mode on someone else's terminal. You should also try to avoid the use of tabs, too, since they may also be interpreted differently on terminals other than your own. Please do not use Usenet as a resource for homework assignments. Usenet is not a resource for homework or class assignments. A common new user reaction to learning of all these people out there holding discussions is to view them as a great resource for gathering information for reports and papers. Trouble is, after seeing a few hundred such requests, most people get tired of them, and won't reply anyway. Certainly not in the expected or hoped-for numbers. Posting student questionnaires automatically brands you a "newbie" and does not usually garner much more than a tiny number of replies. Further, some of those replies are likely to be incorrect. Instead, read the group of interest for a while, and find out what the main "threads" are - what are people discussing? Are there any themes you can discover? Are there different schools of thought? Only post something after you've followed the group for a few weeks, after you have read the Frequently Asked Questions posting if the group has one, and if you still have a question or opinion that others will probably find interesting. If you have something interesting to contribute, you'll find that you gain almost instant acceptance, and your posting will generate a large number of follow-up postings. Use these in your research; it is a far more efficient (and accepted) way to learn about the group than to follow that first instinct and post a simple questionnaire. Please do not use Usenet as an advertising medium. Advertisements on Usenet are rarely appreciated. In general, the louder or more inappropriate the ad is, the more antagonism it will stir up. The accompanying posting "Rules for posting to Usenet" has more on this in the section about "Announcement of professional products or services". Try the biz.* hierarchies instead. Avoid posting to multiple newsgroups. Few things annoy Usenet readers as much as multiple copies of a posting appearing in multiple newsgroups. (called 'spamming' for historical reasons) A posting that is cross-posted (i.e lists multiple newsgroups on the Newsgroups: header line) to a few appropriate newsgroups is fine, but even with cross-posts, restraint is advised. For a cross-post, you may want to set the Followup-To: header line to the most suitable group for the rest of the discussion. Summary of Things to Remember Never forget that the person on the other side is human. Don't blame system admins for their users' behavior. Never assume that a person is speaking for their organization. Be careful what you say about others. Be brief. Your postings reflect upon you; be proud of them. Use descriptive titles Think about your audience. Be careful with humor and sarcasm. Only post a message once. Please rotate material with questionable content. Summarize what you are following up. Use mail, don't post a follow-up. Read all follow-ups and don't repeat what has already been said. Double-check follow-up newsgroups and distributions. Be careful about copyrights and licenses. Cite appropriate references. When summarizing, summarize. Mark or rotate answers or spoilers. Spelling flames considered harmful. Don't overdo signatures. Limit line length and avoid control characters. Please do not use Usenet as a resource for homework assignments. Please do not use Usenet as an advertising medium. Avoid posting to multiple newsgroups. (*)UNIX is a registered trademark of X/Open. ----------- This document is in the public domain and may be reproduced or excerpted by anyone wishing to do so. -- Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett krshnbtt@acf2.nyu.edu FAX: 212-254-7885 TEL: 212-998-1628 Department of Performance Studies, 721 Broadway, 6th fl, New York, NY 10003 From krshnbtt@acf2.NYU.EDU Fri Mar 31 13:52:05 1995 Received: by acf2.NYU.EDU (5.61/1.34) id AA16973; Fri, 31 Mar 95 13:36:26 -0500 Date: Fri, 31 Mar 95 13:36:26 -0500 From: krshnbtt (krshnbtt) Message-Id: <9503311836.AA16973@acf2.NYU.EDU> To: krshnbtt@acf2.NYU.EDU Subject: (fwd) What is Usenet? Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions Organization: New York University Path: cmcl2!panix!news.mathworks.com!mvb.saic.com!baccus.itl.saic.com!baccus.itl.saic.com!not-for-mail From: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes) Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.admin.misc,news.answers Subject: What is Usenet? Followup-To: news.newusers.questions Date: 17 Mar 1995 15:46:27 -0800 Organization: Science Applications International Corporation Lines: 390 Sender: news@baccus.itl.saic.com Approved: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes) Message-ID: <3kd70j$qjs@baccus.itl.saic.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: baccus.itl.saic.com Xref: cmcl2 news.announce.newusers:1714 news.admin.misc:35641 news.answers:39468 Archive-name: usenet/what-is/part1 Original-from: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) Comment: edited until 5/93 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) Last-change: 25 Nov 1994 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes) Changes-posted-to: news.misc,news.admin.misc,news.answers AN APPROXIMATE DESCRIPTION -------------------------- Usenet is a world-wide distributed discussion system. It consists of a set of "newsgroups" with names that are classified hierarchically by subject. "Articles" or "messages" are "posted" to these newsgroups by people on computers with the appropriate software -- these articles are then broadcast to other interconnected computer systems via a wide variety of networks. Some newsgroups are "moderated"; in these newsgroups, the articles are first sent to a moderator for approval before appearing in the newsgroup. Usenet is available on a wide variety of computer systems and networks, but the bulk of modern Usenet traffic is transported over either the Internet or UUCP. WHY IS USENET SO HARD TO DEFINE? -------------------------------- 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! Any essay on the nature of Usenet cannot ignore the erroneous impressions held by many Usenet users. Therefore, this article will treat falsehoods first. Keep reading for truth. (Beauty, alas, is not relevant to Usenet.) WHAT USENET IS NOT ------------------ 1. Usenet is not an organization. No person or group has authority over Usenet as a whole. No one controls who gets a news feed, which articles are propagated where, who can post articles, or anything else. There is no "Usenet Incorporated," nor is there a "Usenet User's Group." You're on your own. Granted, there are various activities organized by means of Usenet newsgroups. The newsgroup creation process is one such activity. But it would be a mistake to equate Usenet with the organized activities it makes possible. If they were to stop tomorrow, Usenet would go on without them. 2. Usenet is not a democracy. Since there is no person or group in charge of Usenet as a whole -- i.e. there is no Usenet "government" -- it follows that Usenet cannot be a democracy, autocracy, or any other kind of "-acy." (But see "The Camel's Nose?" below.) 3. Usenet is not fair. After all, who shall decide what's fair? For that matter, if someone is behaving unfairly, who's going to stop him? Neither you nor I, that's certain. 4. Usenet is not a right. Some people misunderstand their local right of "freedom of speech" to mean that they have a legal right to use others' computers to say what they wish in whatever way they wish, and the owners of said computers have no right to stop them. Those people are wrong. Freedom of speech also means freedom not to speak. If I choose not to use my computer to aid your speech, that is my right. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. 5. Usenet is not a public utility. Some Usenet sites are publicly funded or subsidized. Most of them, by plain count, are not. There is no government monopoly on Usenet, and little or no government control. 6. Usenet is not an academic network. It is no surprise that many Usenet sites are universities, research labs or other academic institutions. Usenet originated with a link between two universities, and the exchange of ideas and information is what such institutions are all about. But the passage of years has changed Usenet's character. Today, by plain count, most Usenet sites are commercial entities. 7. Usenet is not an advertising medium. Because of Usenet's roots in academia, and because Usenet depends so heavily on cooperation (sometimes among competitors), custom dictates that advertising be kept to a minimum. It is tolerated if it is infrequent, informative, and low-hype. The "comp.newprod" newsgroup is NOT an exception to this rule: product announcements are screened by a moderator in an attempt to keep the hype-to-information ratio in check. If you must engage in flackery for your company, use the "biz" hierarchy, which is explicitly "advertising-allowed", and which (like all of Usenet) is carried only by those sites that want it. 8. Usenet is not the Internet. The Internet is a wide-ranging network, parts of which are subsidized by various governments. It carries many kinds of traffic, of which Usenet is only one. And the Internet is only one of the various networks carrying Usenet traffic. 9. Usenet is not a UUCP network. UUCP is a protocol (actually a "protocol suite," but that's a technical quibble) for sending data over point-to-point connections, typically using dialup modems. Sites use UUCP to carry many kinds of traffic, of which Usenet is only one. And UUCP is only one of the various transports carrying Usenet traffic. 10. Usenet is not a United States network. It is true that Usenet originated in the United States, and the fastest growth in Usenet sites has been there. Nowadays, however, Usenet extends worldwide. The heaviest concentrations of Usenet sites outside the U.S. seem to be in Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan. Keep Usenet's worldwide nature in mind when you post articles. Even those who can read your language may have a culture wildly different from yours. When your words are read, they might not mean what you think they mean. 11. Usenet is not a UNIX network. Don't assume that everyone is using "rn" on a UNIX machine. Among the systems used to read and post to Usenet are Vaxen running VMS, IBM mainframes, Amigas, Macintoshes and MS-DOS PCs. 12. Usenet is not an ASCII network. The A in ASCII stands for "American". Sites in other countries often use character sets better suited to their language(s) of choice; such are typically, though not always, supersets of ASCII. Even in the United States, ASCII is not universally used: IBM mainframes use (shudder) EBCDIC. Ignore non-ASCII sites if you like, but they exist. 13. Usenet is not software. There are dozens of software packages used at various sites to transport and read Usenet articles. So no one program or package can be called "the Usenet software." Software designed to support Usenet traffic can be (and is) used for other kinds of communication, usually without risk of mixing the two. Such private communication networks are typically kept distinct from Usenet by the invention of newsgroup names different from the universally-recognized ones. Well, enough negativity. WHAT USENET IS -------------- Usenet is the set of people who exchange articles tagged with one or more universally-recognized labels, called "newsgroups" (or "groups" for short). There is often confusion about the precise set of newsgroups that constitute Usenet; one commonly accepted definition is that it consists of newsgroups listed in the periodic "List of Active Newsgroups" postings which appear regularly in news.lists and other newsgroups. (Note that the correct term is "newsgroups"; they are not called areas, bases, boards, bboards, conferences, round tables, SIGs, echoes, rooms or usergroups! Nor, as noted above, are they part of the Internet, though they may reach your site over it. Furthermore, the people who run the news systems are called news administrators, not sysops. If you want to be understood, be accurate.) DIVERSITY --------- If the above definition of Usenet sounds vague, that's because it is. It is almost impossible to generalize over all Usenet sites in any non-trivial way. Usenet encompasses government agencies, large universities, high schools, businesses of all sizes, home computers of all descriptions, etc, etc. (In response to the above paragraphs, it has been written that there is nothing vague about a network that carries megabytes of traffic per day. I agree. But at the fringes of Usenet, traffic is not so heavy. In the shadowy world of news-mail gateways and mailing lists, the line between Usenet and not-Usenet becomes very hard to draw.) CONTROL ------- Every administrator controls his own site. No one has any real control over any site but his own. The administrator gets her power from the owner of the system she administers. As long as her job performance pleases the owner, she can do whatever she pleases, up to and including cutting off Usenet entirely. Them's the breaks. Sites are not entirely without influence on their neighbors, however. There is a vague notion of "upstream" and "downstream" related to the direction of high-volume news flow. To the extent that "upstream" sites decide what traffic they will carry for their "downstream" neighbors, those "upstream" sites have some influence on their neighbors' participation in Usenet. But such influence is usually easy to circumvent; and heavy-handed manipulation typically results in a backlash of resentment. PERIODIC POSTINGS ----------------- To help hold Usenet together, various articles (including this one) are periodically posted in newsgroups in the "news" hierarchy. These articles are provided as a public service by various volunteers. They are few but valuable. Learn them well. Among the periodic postings are lists of active newsgroups, both "standard" (for lack of a better term) and "alternative." These lists, maintained by David Lawrence, reflect his personal view of Usenet, and as such are not "official" in any sense of the word. However, if you're looking for a description of subjects discussed on Usenet, or if you're starting up a new Usenet site, David's lists are an eminently reasonable place to start. PROPAGATION ----------- In the old days, when UUCP over long-distance dialup lines was the dominant means of article transmission, a few well-connected sites had real influence in determining which newsgroups would be carried where. Those sites called themselves "the backbone." But things have changed. Nowadays, even the smallest Internet site has connectivity the likes of which the backbone admin of yesteryear could only dream. In addition, in the U.S., the advent of cheaper long-distance calls and high-speed modems has made long-distance Usenet feeds thinkable for smaller companies. There is only one pre-eminent site for UUCP transport of Usenet in the U.S., namely UUNET. But UUNET isn't a player in the propagation wars, because it never refuses any traffic. UUNET charges by the minute, after all; and besides, to refuse based on content might jeopardize its legal status as an enhanced service provider. All of the above applies to the U.S. In Europe, different cost structures favored the creation of strictly controlled hierarchical organizations with central registries. This is all very unlike the traditional mode of U.S. sites (pick a name, get the software, get a feed, you're on). Europe's "benign monopolies," long uncontested, now face competition from looser organizations patterned after the U.S. model. NEWSGROUP CREATION ------------------ The document that describes the current procedure for creating a new newsgroup is entitled "How To Create A New Newsgroup." Its common name, however, is "the guidelines." If you follow the guidelines, it is probable that your group will be created and will be widely propagated. HOWEVER: Because of the nature of Usenet, there is no way for any user to enforce the results of a newsgroup vote (or any other decision, for that matter). Therefore, for your new newsgroup to be propagated widely, you must not only follow the letter of the guidelines; you must also follow its spirit. And you must not allow even a whiff of shady dealings or dirty tricks to mar the vote. In other words, don't tick off system administrators; they will get their revenge. So, you may ask: How is a new user supposed to know anything about the "spirit" of the guidelines? Obviously, he can't. This fact leads inexorably to the following recommendation: >> If you are a new user, don't try to create a new newsgroup. << If you have a good newsgroup idea, then read the "news.groups" newsgroup for a while (six months, at least) to find out how things work. If you're too impatient to wait six months, then you really need to learn; read "news.groups" for a year instead. If you just can't wait, find a Usenet old hand to help you with the request for discussion. (All votes are run by neutral third-party Usenet Volunteer Votetakers). Readers may think this advice unnecessarily strict. Ignore it at your peril. It is embarrassing to speak before learning. It is foolish to jump into a society you don't understand with your mouth open. And it is futile to try to force your will on people who can tune you out with the press of a key. THE CAMEL'S NOSE? ----------------- As was observed above in "What Usenet Is Not," Usenet as a whole is not a democracy. However, there is exactly one feature of Usenet that has a form of democracy: newsgroup creation. A new newsgroup is unlikely to be widely propagated unless its sponsor follows the newsgroup creation guidelines; and the current guidelines require a new newsgroup to pass an open vote. There are those who consider the newsgroup creation process to be a remarkably powerful form of democracy, since without any coercion, its decisions are almost always carried out. In their view, the democratic aspect of newsgroup creation is the precursor to an organized and democratic Usenet Of The Future. On the other hand, some consider the democratic aspect of the newsgroup creation process a sham and a fraud, since there is no power of enforcement behind its decisions, and since there appears little likelihood that any such power of enforcement will ever be given it. For them, the appearance of democracy is only a tool used to keep proponents of flawed newsgroup proposals from complaining about their losses. So, is Usenet on its way to full democracy? Or will property rights and mistrust of central authority win the day? Beats me. IF YOU ARE UNHAPPY... --------------------- Property rights being what they are, there is no higher authority on Usenet than the people who own the machines on which Usenet traffic is carried. If the owner of the machine you use says, "We will not carry alt.sex on this machine," and you are not happy with that order, you have no Usenet recourse. What can we outsiders do, after all? That doesn't mean you are without options. Depending on the nature of your site, you may have some internal political recourse. Or you might find external pressure helpful. Or, with a minimal investment, you can get a feed of your own from somewhere else. Computers capable of taking Usenet feeds are down in the $500 range now, UNIX-capable boxes are going for under $1000 (that price is dropping fast, so by the time you read this, it may already be out-of-date!) and there are several freely-redistributable UNIX-like operating systems (NetBSD, FreeBSD, 386BSD and Linux from ftp sites all around the world, complete with source code and all the software needed to run a Usenet site) and at least two commercial UNIX or UNIX-like systems in the $100 price range. No matter what, though, appealing to "Usenet" won't help. Even if those who read such an appeal are sympathetic to your cause, they will almost certainly have even less influence at your site than you do. By the same token, if you don't like what some user at another site is doing, only the administrator and owner of that site have any authority to do anything about it. Persuade them that the user in question is a problem for them, and they might do something -- if they feel like it, that is. If the user in question is the administrator or owner of the site from which she posts, forget it; you can't win. If you can, arrange for your newsreading software to ignore articles from her; and chalk one up to experience. WORDS TO LIVE BY #1: USENET AS SOCIETY -------------------- Those who have never tried electronic communication may not be aware of what a "social skill" really is. One social skill that must be learned, is that other people have points of view that are not only different, but *threatening*, to your own. In turn, your opinions may be threatening to others. There is nothing wrong with this. Your beliefs need not be hidden behind a facade, as happens with face-to-face conversation. Not everybody in the world is a bosom buddy, but you can still have a meaningful conversation with them. The person who cannot do this lacks in social skills. -- Nick Szabo WORDS TO LIVE BY #2: USENET AS ANARCHY -------------------- Anarchy means having to put up with things that really piss you off. -- Unknown -- Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett krshnbtt@acf2.nyu.edu FAX: 212-254-7885 TEL: 212-998-1628 Department of Performance Studies, 721 Broadway, 6th fl, New York, NY 10003 From krshnbtt@acf2.NYU.EDU Fri Mar 31 13:52:38 1995 Received: by acf2.NYU.EDU (5.61/1.34) id AA17191; Fri, 31 Mar 95 13:37:38 -0500 Date: Fri, 31 Mar 95 13:37:38 -0500 From: krshnbtt (krshnbtt) Message-Id: <9503311837.AA17191@acf2.NYU.EDU> To: krshnbtt@acf2.NYU.EDU Subject: (fwd) What is Usenet? A second opinion. Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions Organization: New York University Path: cmcl2!newsjunkie.ans.net!gatech!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!usc!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to- reply Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 09:01:59 GMT Supersedes: Expires: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 09:01:58 GMT Message-ID: From: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti) Subject: What is Usenet? A second opinion. Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.admin.misc,news.answers Followup-To: news.newusers.questions Reply-To: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti) Approved: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes) Lines: 471 Xref: cmcl2 news.announce.newusers:1732 news.admin.misc:36820 news.answers:40158 Original-author: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti) Original-date: 26 Dec 1991 Archive-name: usenet/what-is/part2 Last-change: 26 Oct 1994 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes) Changes-posted-to: news.misc,news.admin.misc,news.answers The periodically posted "What is Usenet?" posting goes: > >Archive-name: what-is-usenet/part1 >Original-from: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) > >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! Imagine, indeed, how poorly understood Usenet must be by those who have the determined will to explain what it is by what it is not? "Usenet is not a bicycle. Usenet is not a fish." Any posting like this that doesn't get revised every few months quickly becomes a quaint historical document, which at best yields a prescriptivist grammar for how the net "should be" and at worst tries to shape how the Usenet "really is". The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it is big. Really big. Netnews (and netnews-like things) have percolated into many more places than are even known about by people who track such things. There is no grand unified list of everything that's out there, no way to know beforehand who is going to read what you post, and no history books to guide you that would let you know even a small piece of any of the in jokes that pop up in most newsgroups. Distrust any grand sweeping statements about "Usenet", because you can always find a counterexample. (Distrust this message, too :-). >Any essay on the nature of Usenet cannot ignore the erroneous >impressions held by many Usenet users. Therefore, this article will >treat falsehoods first. Keep reading for truth. (Beauty, alas, is >not relevant to Usenet.) Any essay on the nature of Usenet that doesn't change every so often to reflect its ever changing nature is erroneous. Usenet is not a matter of "truth", "beauty", "falsehood", "right", or "wrong", except insofar as it is a conduit for people to talk about these and many other things. >WHAT USENET IS NOT >------------------ > 1. Usenet is not an organization. Usenet is organized. There are a number of people who contribute to its continued organization -- people who post lists of things, people who collect "frequently asked questions" postings, people who give out or sell newsfeeds, people who keep archives of groups, people who put those archives into web servers, people who turn those archives into printed books, talk shows, and game shows. This organization is accompanied by a certain amount of disorganization -- news software that doesn't always work just right, discussions that wander from place to place, parts of the net that resist easy classification. Order and disorder are part of the same whole. In the short run, the person or group who runs the system that you read news from and the sites which that system exchanges news with control who gets a feed, which articles are propogated to what places and how quickly, and who can post articles. In the long run, there are a number of alternatives for Usenet access, including companies which can sell you feeds for a fee, and user groups which provide feeds for their members; while you are on your own right now as you type this in, over the long haul there are many choices you have on how to deal with the net. > 2. Usenet is not a democracy. Usenet has some very "democratic" sorts of traditions. Traffic is ultimately generated by readers, and people who read news ultimately control what will and will not be discussed on the net. While the details of any individual person's news reading system may limit or constrain what is easy or convenient for them to do right now, in the long haul the decisions on what is or is not happening rests with the people. On the other hand, there have been (and always will be) people who have been on the net longer than you or I have been, and who have a strong sense of tradition and the way things are normally done. There are certain things which are simply "not done". Any sort of decision that involves counting the number of people yes or no on a particular vote has to cope with the entrenched interests who aren't about to change their habits, their posting software, or the formatting of their headers just to satisfy a new idea. > 3. Usenet is not fair. Usenet is fair, cocktail party, town meeting, notes of a secret cabal, chatter in the hallway at a conference, friday night fish fry, post-coital gossip, conversations overhead on an airplane, and a bunch of other things. > 4. Usenet is not a right. Usenet is a right, a left, a jab, and a sharp uppercut to the jaw. The postman hits! You have new mail. > 5. Usenet is not a public utility. Usenet is carried in large part over circuits provided by public utilities, including the public switched phone network and lines leased from public carriers. In some countries the national networking authority has some amount of monopoly power over the provision of these services, and thus the flow of information is controlled in some manner by the whims and desires (and pricing structure) of the public utility. Most Usenet sites are operated by organizations which are not public utilities, not in the ordinary sense. You rarely get your newsfeed from National Telecom, it's more likely to be National U. or Private Networking Inc. > 6. Usenet is not an academic network. Usenet is a network with many parts to it. Some parts are academic, some parts aren't. Usenet is clearly not a commercial network like Sprintnet or Tymnet, and it's not an academic network like BITNET. But parts of BITNET are parts of Usenet, though some of the traffic on Usenet violates the BITNET acceptable use guidelines, even though the people who are actually on BITNET sites reading these groups don't necessarily mind that they are violating the guidelines. Whew. Usenet is a lot of networks, and none of them. You name another network, and it's not Usenet. > 7. Usenet is not an advertising medium. A man walks into a crowded theater and shouts, "ANYBODY WANT TO BUY A CAR?" The crowd stands up and shouts back, "WRONG THEATER!" Ever since the first dinette set for sale in New Jersey was advertised around the world, people have been using Usenet for personal and for corporate gain. If you're careful about it and don't make people mad, Usenet can be an effective means of letting the world know about things which you find valuable. But take care... - Marketing hype will be flamed immediately. If you need to post a press release, edit it first. - Speak nice of your competitors. If your product is better than theirs, don't say theirs is "brain damaged", "broken", or "worthless". After all someone else might have the same opinion of your product. - Dance around the issue. Post relevant information (like price, availability and features) but make sure you don't send everything out. If someone wants the hard sell let them request it from you by e-mail. - Don't be an idiot. If you sell toasters for a living, don't spout off in net.breadcrumbs about an international conspiracy to poison pigeons orchestrated by the secret Usenet Cabal; toaster-buyers will get word of your reputation for idiocy and avoid your toasters even if they are the best in the market. - Disclaimers are worthless. If you post from foobar.com, and put a note on the bottom "not the opinions of foobar inc.,", you may satisfy the lawyers but your corporate reputation still will be affected. To maintain a separate net.identity, post from a different site. > 8. Usenet is not the Internet. It would be very difficult to sustain the level of traffic that's flowing on Usenet today if it weren't for people sending news feeds over dedicated circuits with TCP/IP on the Internet. That's not to say that if a sudden disease wiped out all RS/6000s and Cisco routers that form the NSFnet backbone, CIX hub, and MAE East interconnect, that some people wouldn't be inconvenienced or cut off from the net entirely. (Based on the reliability of the MAE East, perhaps the "sudden disease" has already hit?) There's a certain symbiosis between netnews and Internet connections; the cost of maintaining a full newsfeed with NNTP is so much less than doing the same thing with dialup UUCP that sites which depend enough on the information flowing through news are some of the most eager to get on the Internet. The Usenet is not the Internet. Certain governments have laws which prevent other countries from getting onto the Internet, but that doesn't stop netnews from flowing in and out. Chances are pretty good that a site which has a Usenet feed you can send mail to from the Internet, but even that's not guaranteed in some odd cases (news feeds sent on CD-ROM, for instance). > 9. Usenet is not a UUCP network. UUCP carried the first netnews traffic, and a considerable number of sites get their newsfeed using UUCP. But it's also fed using NNTP, mag tapes, CD-ROMs, and printed out on paper to be tacked up on bulletin boards and pasted on refrigerators. >10. Usenet is not a United States network. A 1991 analysis of the top 1000 Usenet sites showed about 58% US sites, 15% unknown, 8% Germany, 6% Canada, 2-3% each the UK, Japan, and Australia, and the rest mostly scattered around Europe. Things have no doubt changed since then, but I don't have that data close at hand. The state of California is the center of the net, with about 14% of the mapped top sites there. The Washington, DC area is also the center of the net, with several large providers headquartered there. You can read netnews on all seven continents, including Antarctica. If you're looking for a somewhat less US-centered view of the world, try reading regional newsgroups from various different states or groups from various far-away places (which depending on where you are at could be Japanese, German, Canadian, or Australian). There are a lot of people out there who are different from you. >11. Usenet is not a UNIX network. Well...ok, if you don't have a UNIX machine, you can read news. In fact, there are substantial sets of newsgroups (bit.*) which are transported and gatewayed primarily through IBM VM systems, and a set of newsgroups (vmsnet.*) which has major traffic through DEC VMS systems. Reasonable news relay software runs on Macs (uAccess), Amiga (a C news port), MS-DOS (Waffle), and no doubt quite a few more. I'm was typing on a DOS machine when I first wrote this sentence, and it's been edited on Macs and X terminals since then. There is a certain culture about the net that has grown up on Unix machines, which occasionally runs into fierce clashes with the culture that has grown up on IBM machines (LISTSERV), Commodore 64's (B1FF 1S A K00L D00D), MS-DOS Fidonet systems, commercial chat systems (America Online), and "family oriented" systems (Prodigy). If you are not running on a Unix machine or if you don't have one handy there are things about the net which are going to be puzzling or maddening, much as if you are reading a BITNET list and you don't have a CMS system handy. >12. Usenet is not an ASCII network. There are reasonably standard ways to type Japanese, Russian, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, and Vietnamese that use the ASCII character set to encode your national character set. The fundamental assumption of most netnews software is that you're dealing with something that looks a lot like US ASCII, but if you're willing to work within those bounds and be clever it's quite possible to use ASCII to discuss things in any language. >13. Usenet is not software. Usenet software has gotten much better over time to cope with the ever increasing aggregate flow of netnews and (in some cases) the extreme volume that newsgroups generate. If you were reading news now with the same news software that was running 10 years ago, you'd never be able to keep up. Your system would choke and die and spend all of its time either processing incoming news or expiring old news. Without software and constant improvements to same, Usenet would not be here. There is no "standard" Usenet software, but there are standards for what Usenet articles look like, and what sites are expected to do with them. It's possible to write a fairly simple minded news system directly from the standards documents and be reasonably sure that it will work with other systems, though thorough testing is necessary if it's going to be used in the real world. You should not assume that all systems have been tested before they have been deployed. >WHAT USENET IS >-------------- Usenet is in part about people. There are people who are "on the net", who read rec.humor.funny every so often, who know the same jokes you do, who tell you stories about funny or stupid things they've seen. Usenet is the set of people who know what Usenet is. Usenet is a bunch of bits, lots of bits, millions of bits each day full of nonsense, argument, reasonable technical discussion, scholarly analysis, and naughty pictures. Usenet (or netnews) is about newsgroups (or groups). Not bboards, not LISTSERV, not areas, not conferences, not mailing lists, they're groups. If someone calls them something else they're not looking at things from a Usenet perspective. That's not to say that they're "incorrect" -- who is to say what is the right way of viewing the world? -- just that it's not the Net Way. In particular, if they read Usenet news all mixed in with their important every day mail (like reminders of who to go to lunch with Thursday) they're not seeing netnews the way most people see netnews. Some newsgroups are also (or "really") Fidonet echoes (alt.bbs.allsysop), BITNET LISTSERV groups (bit.listserv.pacs-l), or even both at once! (misc.handicap). So be prepared for some violent culture clashes if someone refers to you favorite net.hangout as a "board". Newsgroups have names. These names are both very arbitrary and very meaningful. People will fight for months or years about what to name a newsgroup. If a newsgroup doesn't have a name (even a dumb one like misc.misc) it's not a newsgroup. In particular newsgroup names have dots in them, and people abbreviate them by taking the first letters of the names (so alt.folklore.urban is afu, and soc.culture.china is scc). >DIVERSITY >--------- There is nothing vague about Usenet. (Vague, vague, it's filling up millions of dollars worth of disk drives and you want to call it vague? Sheesh!) It may be hard to pin down what is and isn't part of Usenet at the fringes, but netnews has tended to grow amoeba-like to encompass more or less anything in its path, so you can be pretty sure that if it isn't Usenet now it will be once it's been in contact with Usenet for long enough. There are a lot of systems that are part of Usenet. Chances are that you don't have any clue where all your articles will end up going or what news reading software will be used to look at them. Any message of any appreciable size or with any substantial personal opinion in it is probably in violation of some network use policy or local ordinance in some state or municipality. >CONTROL >------- Some people are control freaks. They want to present their opinion of how things are, who runs what, what is OK and not OK to do, which things are "good" and which are "bad". You will run across them every so often. They serve a useful purpose; there's a lot of chaos inherent in a largely self-governing system, and people with a strong sense of purpose and order can make things a lot easier. Just don't believe everything they say. In particular, don't believe them when they say "don't believe everything they say", because if they post the same answers month after month some other people are bound to believe them. If you run a news system you can be a petty tyrant. You can decide what groups to carry, who to kick off your system, how to expire old news so that you keep 60 days worth of misc.petunias but expire rec.pets.fish almost immediately. In the long run you will probably be happiest if you make these decisions relatively even-handedly since that's the posture least likely to get people to notice that you actually do have control. Your right to exercise control over netnews usually ends at your neighbor's spool directory. Pleading, cajoling, appealing to good nature, or paying your news feed will generally yield a better response than flames on the net. >PERIODIC POSTINGS >----------------- One of the ways to exert control over the workings of the net is to take the time to put together a relatively accurate set of answers to some frequently asked questions and post it every month. If you do this right, the article will be stored for months on sites around the world, and you'll be able to tell people "idiot, don't ask this question until you've read the FAQ, especially answer #42". The periodic postings include several lists of newsgroups, along with comments as to what the contents of the groups are supposed to be. Anyone who has the time and energy can put together a list like this, and if they post it for several months running they will get some measure of net.recognition for themselves as being the "official" keeper of the "official" list. But don't delude yourself into thinking that anything on the net is official in any real way; the lists serve to perpetuate common myths about who's talking about what where, but that's no guarantee that things will actually work out that way. >PROPAGATION >----------- In the old days, when it cost real money to make long distance phone calls to send netnews around the world, some people were able to get their management to look the other way when they racked up multi-thousand dollar phone bills. These people were called the "backbone cabal", and they had a disproportionate influence on news traffic because, after all, they were managing to get someone else to pay for it. Nowadays, communications costs are (for many sites) buried in with a general "internet service". If you want to have a disproportionate influence on news traffic, you need to be able to beg, borrow, buy or steal access to great big disk drives (so that you can keep a full feed) and lots of memory (so that you can feed a lot of sites at once). There is a vigorous, competetive cash market for news feeds; you can get a newsfeed from a local provider via modem or via Internet in all 50 states of the USA, more than 50 countries, and via satellite in most of North America. The notion that any one system is a "pre-eminent site" is outdated; communications costs have gotten low enough, and traffic high enough, that if any one node were to get wiped out completely it would still be possible for everyone to be back on the net within weeks. >NEWSGROUP CREATION >------------------ You're better off starting up a mailing list. If you *must* start a newsgroup, you're best off starting a mailing list anyway - even an informal one - to plan the newsgroup. Get a half dozen people to all agree on the basic goals, topics of conversation, etc. Figure that you have about two months to agree that there's something worth talking about, get a hundred other people to see your way, and run the vote. There are time-honored rituals for newsgroup creation, designed mostly to minimize the amount of work that news administrators (the people who have managed to corral a bunch of disk space to store news) have to do; in particular, this involves minimizing the number of mail messages they have to read every day. The process involves handing off responsibility to a group of people well-steeped in ritual (the Usenet Volunteer Votetakers) who can run through the process for you. >THE CAMEL'S NOSE? >----------------- I'm not sure what camels have to do with anything. The only real camel that has anything to do with Usenet is Larry Wall and Randal Schwartz's "Programming perl", aka the "Camel Book", published by O'Reilley. Larry wrote "rn", one of the second generation of news readers that let you ignore some news that you didn't want to read. The process of getting rid of unread news got to be a complex enough decision process that he wrote a programming language (perl) to help him write a newsreader to replace "rn". He never finished the new newsreader, though that's not at all surprising. "perl" is a pretty useful language, though. If you can understand "perl" you'll have a much greater appreciation for the ability of news admins to get rid of things they don't want to see. There are easily $12M worth of computers that I can point to that are responsible for the transportation of netnews around the world, plus another $12M per year in communications bills spent to keep news flowing. Much has been made of the risk that miscreants will do something horrendous that will mean The Death Of The Net As We Know It. It seems unlikely, however, that this collective enterprise will be endangered by any one user's actions, no matter how bold they might be about trying to propogate their message against the collective will of the rest of the net trying to keep them in check. >IF YOU ARE UNHAPPY... >--------------------- If you are unhappy, what are you doing reading netnews? Take a break. Stretch. Walk outside in the sunshine or the snow. Relax your brain, watch some TV for a while, listen to the radio. If you need to communicate with someone else, give them a phone call, or see them in person. It's good to not spend too much time all in the same place with a fixed focus - rest your eyes everyone once in a while by looking around at something else. Don't worry about missing anything, it'll all get re-posted if it's any good. >WORDS TO LIVE BY #1: >-------------------- Hours can slip by, people can come and go, and you'll be locked in Cyberspace. Remember to do your work! -- Brendan Kehoe >WORDS TO LIVE BY #2: >-------------------- Part of the apprenticeship for a network guru was knowing enough other people and attending enough conferences to find out where things were hidden. This worked just fine when the Internet was a small network. -- Ed Krol >WORDS TO LIVE BY #3: >-------------------- The second newsreader philosophy believes that you want to read only 10 percent of the articles in any given group.... This philosophy is far more realistic. -- Adam Engst -- Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett krshnbtt@acf2.nyu.edu FAX: 212-254-7885 TEL: 212-998-1628 Department of Performance Studies, 721 Broadway, 6th fl, New York, NY 10003 From krshnbtt@acf2.NYU.EDU Fri Mar 31 13:52:48 1995 Received: by acf2.NYU.EDU (5.61/1.34) id AA17395; Fri, 31 Mar 95 13:38:36 -0500 Date: Fri, 31 Mar 95 13:38:36 -0500 From: krshnbtt (krshnbtt) Message-Id: <9503311838.AA17395@acf2.NYU.EDU> To: krshnbtt@acf2.NYU.EDU Subject: (fwd) Usenet Software: History and Sources Newsgroups: news.admin.misc Organization: New York University Path: cmcl2!newsjunkie.ans.net!gatech!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-repl y Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 09:01:37 GMT Supersedes: Expires: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 09:01:37 GMT Message-ID: From: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes) Subject: Usenet Software: History and Sources Newsgroups: news.admin.misc,news.announce.newusers,news.software.readers,news.software.b,news.answers Followup-To: news.admin.misc Approved: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes) Lines: 609 Xref: cmcl2 news.admin.misc:36818 news.announce.newusers:1727 news.software.readers:17548 news.software.b:59526 news.answers:40148 Archive-name: usenet/software/part1 Original-from: spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) Comment: edited until 5/93 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) Last-change: 13 Mar 1995 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes) Changes-posted-to: news.admin.misc,news.misc,news.software.readers,news.software.b,news.answers Currently, Usenet readers interact with the news using a number of software packages and programs. This article mentions the important ones and a little of their history, gives pointers where you can look for more information and ends with some special notes about "foreign" and "obsolete" software. At the very end is a list of sites from which current versions of the Usenet software may be obtained. Note that the number of software packages available to run news, especially on PCs, is increasing. This article lists only a few of the many news packages available, and the presence or absence of any particular software package should not be construed as indicating anything about its suitability usefulness. The material contained in this post is probably not 100% up-to-date. Many of the software packages described in this posting are undergoing constant development, and it is not always possible to know when new releases have been made. Should you discover that information in this post has been superseded by a new release, please send mail to the poster of this article with the corrected information. While the "official" ftp archive sites for packages are listed, note that most large archive sites carry news software; please try the one nearest to you before you use up expensive bandwidth on a trans-continental network link. You can check the official site for the current version number, if you want to make sure you're getting the latest version. In general, a good place to get recent versions of the more popular news transport and reading software by anonymous ftp is ftp.uu.net:/networking/news/ directory. History ------- Usenet came into being in late 1979, shortly after the release of V7 Unix with UUCP. Two Duke University grad students in North Carolina, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, thought of hooking computers together to exchange information with the Unix community. Steve Bellovin, a grad student at the University of North Carolina, put together the first version of the news software using shell scripts and installed it on the first two sites: "unc" and "duke." At the beginning of 1980 the network consisted of those two sites and "phs" (another machine at Duke), and was described at the January Usenix conference. Steve Bellovin later rewrote the scripts into C programs, but they were never released beyond "unc" and "duke." Shortly thereafter, Steve Daniel did another implementation in C for public distribution. Tom Truscott made further modifications, and this became the "A" news release. In 1981 at U. C. Berkeley, grad student Mark Horton and high school student Matt Glickman rewrote the news software to add functionality and to cope with the ever increasing volume of news -- "A" News was intended for only a few articles per group per day. This rewrite was the "B" News version. The first public release was version 2.1 in 1982; the 1.* versions were all beta test. As the net grew, the news software was expanded and modified. The last version maintained and released primarily by Mark was 2.10.1. Rick Adams, at the Center for Seismic Studies, took over coordination of the maintenance and enhancement of the B News software with the 2.10.2 release in 1984. By this time, the increasing volume of news was becoming a concern, and the mechanism for moderated groups was added to the software at 2.10.2. Moderated groups were inspired by ARPA mailing lists and experience with other bulletin board systems. In late 1986, version 2.11 of B News was released, including a number of changes to support a new naming structure for newsgroups, enhanced batching and compression, enhanced ihave/sendme control messages, and other features. The current release of B News is 2.11, patchlevel 19. Article format is specified in RFC 1036 (see below). B News has been declared "dead" by a number of people, including Rick Adams, and is unlikely to be upgraded further; most new UUCP sites are using C News or INN (see next paragraphs). In March 1986 a package was released implementing news transmission, posting, and reading using the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) (as specified in RFC 977). This protocol allows hosts to exchange articles via TCP/IP connections rather than using the traditional uucp. It also permits users to read and post news (using a modified news user agent) from machines which cannot or choose not to install the Usenet news software. Reading and posting are done using TCP/IP messages to a server host which does run the Usenet software. Sites which have many workstations like the Sun and SGI, and HP products find this a convenient way to allow workstation users to read news without having to store articles on each system. Many of the Usenet hosts that are also on the Internet exchange news articles using NNTP because the load impact of NNTP is much lower than uucp (and NNTP ensures much faster propagation). NNTP grew out of independent work in 1984-1985 by Brian Kantor at U. C. San Diego and Phil Lapsley at U. C. Berkeley. Primary development was done at U. C. Berkeley by by Phil Lapsley with help from Erik Fair, Steven Grady, and Mike Meyer, among others. The NNTP package (now called the reference implementation) was distributed on the 4.3BSD release tape (although that was version 1.2a and out-of-date) and is also available on many major hosts by anonymous FTP. The current version is 1.5.12.1. It includes NOV support and runs on a wide variety of systems. It is available from ftp.academ.com:/pub/nntp1.5/nntp.1.5.12.1.tar.Z. For those with access to the World-Wide Web on the Internet, the WWW page http://www.academ.com/academ/nntp.html contains a description and news about NNTP. A different variant, called nntp-t5, implements many of the extensions provided by INN (most notably News Overview NOV support -- see below). It is available from ftp.uu.net:/networking/news/nntp/nntp-t5.tar.gz. One new version of news, known as C News, was developed at the University of Toronto by Geoff Collyer and Henry Spencer. This version is a rewrite of the lowest levels of news to increase article processing speed, decrease article expiration processing and improve the reliability of the news system through better locking, etc. The package was released to the net in the autumn of 1987. For more information, see the paper "News Need Not Be Slow," published in The Winter 1987 Usenix Technical Conference proceedings. This paper is also available from ftp.cs.toronto.edu in doc/programming/c-news.*, and is recommended reading for all news software programmers. The most recent version of C News is the Sept 1994 "Cleanup Release." C News can be obtained by anonymous ftp from its official archive site, ftp.cs.toronto.edu:pub/c-news/c-news.tar.Z. Another Usenet system, known as InterNetNews, or INN, was written by Rich Salz . INN is designed to run on Unix hosts that have a socket interface. It is optimized for larger hosts where most traffic uses NNTP, but it does provide full UUCP support. INN is very fast, and since it integrates NNTP many people find it easier to administer only one package. The package was publicly released on August 20, 1992. For more information, see the paper "InterNetNews: Usenet Transport for Internet Sites" published in the June 1992 Usenix Technical Conference Proceedings. INN can be obtained from many places, including the 4.4BSD tape; its official archive site is ftp.uu.net in the directory /networking/news/nntp/inn. The current version is 1.4sec, last release 22-dec-1993. Towards the end of 1992, Geoff Collyer implemented NOV (News Overview): a database that stores the important headers of all news articles as they arrive. This is intended for use by the implementors of news readers to provide fast article presentation by sorting and "threading" the article headers. (Before NOV, newsreaders like trn, tin and nn came with their own daemons and databases that used a nontrivial amount of system resources). NOV is fully supported by C News, INN and NNTP-t5. Most modern news readers use NOV to get information for their threading and article menu presentation; use of NOV by a newsreader is fairly easy, since NOV comes with sample client-side threading code. ANU-NEWS is news package written by Geoff Huston of Australia for VMS systems. ANU-NEWS is a complete news system that allows reading, posting, direct replies, moderated newsgroups, etc. in a fashion closely related to regular news. The implementation includes the RFC 1036 news propagation algorithms and integrated use of the NNTP protocols (see below) to support remote news servers, implemented as a VAX/VMS Decnet object. An RFC 977 server implemented as a Decnet object is also included. ANU-NEWS currently includes support for the following TCP/IP protocols: MultiNet, CMU/TEK, Wollongong WIN/TCP, UCX (TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS), EXOS, and TCPware. The ANU-NEWS interface is similar to standard DEC screen oriented systems. The license for the software is free, and there are no restrictions on the re-distribution. For more info, contact gih900@fac.anu.oz.au (Geoff Huston). ANU-NEWS is available for FTP from kuhub.cc.ukans.edu. Contact SLOANE@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU for more info. A screen-oriented news client for VMS that works with CMU/tek, EXOS, MultiNet, UCX, Wollongong and DECnet is also available via ftp from iraun1.ira.uka.de, info.rz.uni-ulm.de, and ftp.spc.edu (contact Bernd Onasch for details). Reader NNTP clients for VMS are also available, including VMS/VNEWS (current release 1.4) and an upcoming reader only version of ANU-NEWS. VMS/VNEWS is available via anonymous ftp from arizona.edu (contact jms@arizona.edu for more information) or at any site which archives vmsnet.source. Although the current release of ANU-NEWS is usable as a reader it can be difficult when used with a UNIX server. FNEWS is a fast news reader, for VAX/VMS and UNIX. It is basically a mixture of NEWSRDR and ANU-NEWS, (a bit like 'nn' in how it works) giving a nice (but different) full-screen interface and fast response to all 3000 groups without heavily loading your local machine. It works by caching the news indexes from a UNIX news system (CNEWS or INN), and then dynamically loading the items when the user wants to read them. Indexes are only cached for groups which are actually read, so the load and disk usage can be very small. FNEWS Versions are available for VMS, ALPHA-VMS and UNIX via anonymous ftp from tui.marc.cri.nz in pub/fnews. Contact chrisp@marc.cri.nz for more information. A port of C News for the Commodore Amiga under AmigaDOS (NOT Unix), is available. The port was done by Frank J. Edwards , and available from Larry Rosenman . Also, Matt Dillon , has greatly improved the UUCP clone for AmigaDOS, currently V1.16D, available for ftp from ftp.uu.net in /systems/amiga/dillon. The package also includes a newsreader very loosely like the real rn. Dillon also has a "vn" port provided by Eric Lee Green. This software is also available on Bix, and for ftp from wuarchive.wustl.edu (many other Amiga newsreaders are also available on theis ftp site). Several popular screen-oriented news reading interfaces have been developed in the last few years to replace the traditional "readnews" interface. The first of these was "vnews" and it was written by Kenneth Almquist. "vnews" provides a "readnews"-like command interface, but displays articles using direct screen positioning. It appears to have been inspired, to some extent, by the "notes" system (described below). "vnews" is currently distributed with the standard 2.11 news source. A second, more versatile interface, "rn", was developed by Larry Wall (the author of Perl) and released in 1984. This interface also uses full-screen display with direct positioning, but it includes many other useful features and has been very popular with many regular net readers. The interface includes reading, discarding, and/or processing of articles based on user-definable patterns, and the ability of the user to develop customized macros for display and keyboard interaction. "rn" is currently at release 4.4.4. It is being maintained by Stan Barber . "rn" is not provided with the standard news software release, but is very widely available because of its popularity. The software can be obtained from its official archive site, ftp.academ.com, using FTP. A description and some news about it can be found on the WWW page http://www.academ.com/academ/rn.html. Wayne Davison's "trn" is a superset of "rn". Trn adds the ability to follow "threads of discussions" in newsgroups; its latest version 3.6 is based on rn 4.4. It uses a Reference-line database to allow the user to take advantage of the "discussion tree" formed by an article and its replies. This results in a true reply-ordered reading of the articles, complete with a small ascii representation of the current article's position in the discussion tree. Trn is also capable of "menu-based" selection of articles, allows one to do useful things to operate on a set of selected newsgroups. Trn can be obtained from ftp.uu.net in the /networking/news/readers/trn directory, and from many other archive servers world-wide. xrn is an X11-based interface to NNTP that was written by Rick Spickelmier and Ellen Sentovich (UC Berkeley) and is currently maintained by Jonathan Kamens (OpenVision Technologies, Inc.). The current version is 7.00, available by anonymous ftp from ftp.x.org in /contrib/applications/xrn. xrn supports many features, including sorting by subject, user-settable key bindings, graceful handling of NNTP server crashes, and many of the features of rn (including KILL files and key bindings similar to rn). Another X11-based newsreader is xvnews, written by Dan Currie, currently maintained by Hans de Graaff . xvnews is an OPENLook newsreader written primarily for Sun workstations running OpenWindows, but it will run on any X workstation which has the XView libraries. It works with NNTP only, and is compatible with rn style commands. The current version is 2.2.1 and is available from its archive site ftp.twi.tudelft.nl in the /pub/news directory. There are two popular macro packages named "GNUS" and "Gnews" that can be used with the GNU Emacs text editor. These allow reading, replying, and posting interaction with the news from inside the Emacs text editor. Client code exists to get the articles using NNTP rather than from a local disk. Copies can be found on most archive sites that carry the GNU archives eg. ftp.cs.titech.ac.jp, archie.au, archive.eu.net, gatekeeper.dec.com, prep.ai.mit.edu. "nn" is yet another reader interface, developed by Kim F. Storm of Texas Instruments A/S, Denmark, and released in 1989. nn differs from the traditional readnews and vnews by presenting a menu of article subject and sender-name lines, allowing you to preselect articles to read. nn is also a very fast newsreader, as it keeps a database of article headers on-line. (I.e. it trades space for time. A good rule of thumb is that the nn database size is 5%-10% of your news spool. So up to 110% of your news spool is the amount of space news and the nn database will take.) nn is now maintained by Peter Wemm , and the "offical" ftp location is the /pub/nn directory on uniwa.uwa.edu.au. The current version of nn is 6.4.18. Non-Australian sites should request the sources from their nearest backbone site. Yet another newsreader is the "tin" reader. It operates with threads, uses NOV-style index files if available, has different article organization methods, and is full-screen oriented. tin works on a local news spool or over an NNTP connection. It has been posted to alt.sources; further information is available from Iain Lea (iain.lea@erlm.siemens.de). The current release of tin is 1.22. Tin is based more on the Notes and tass systems than "rn". There is an extensive list of features, including interfaces to batch modes and auto unpacking mechanisms. The official ftp site for tin is ftp.germany.eu.net, the Unix version can be found in /pub/news/newsreader/unix/tin and the OS/2 version in /pub/news/newsreader/os2/tin Pine(tm) --a Program for Internet News & Email-- is a tool for reading, sending, and managing electronic messages. It was designed specifically with novice computer users in mind, but can be tailored to accommodate the needs of "power users" as well. Pine uses Internet news and mail message protocols and runs on Unix and PCs. Pine is copyrighted, but freely available. The latest version, including source code, can be found on the Internet host "ftp.cac.washington.edu" in the file "pine/pine.tar.Z" (accessible via anonymous FTP). To try Pine out from the Internet, you may telnet to "demo.cac.washington.edu" and login as "pinedemo". There is also a Pine-specific Internet news group (comp.mail.pine). For further information, send e-mail to pine@cac.washington.edu. Pine was originally based on Elm, but there is little if any Elm code left. Pine is the work of Mike Seibel, Steve Hubert, Mark Crispin, Sheryl Erez, David Miller and Laurence Lundblade* at the University of Washington Office of Computing and Communications. Pine and Pico are trademarks of the University of Washington. (* Laurence is now at Virginia Tech.) An NNTP newsreader for Macintoshs is available called HyperNews. It is implemented as a HyperCard stack and depends on MacTCP. It is available from many Mac archives, including ftp.apple.com and sumex-aim.stanford.edu. A newsreader preferred by many Macintosh users is NewsWatcher by by j-norstad@nwu.edu (John Norstad). The current version is 2.0b8 and is available in ftp.acns.nwu.edu:/pub/newswatcher. Nuntius is another newsreader for the Mac, written by Peter Speck . It can be obtained from frederik.ruc.dk, or the Cornell mirror site ftp.cit.cornell.edu in /pub/mac/comm/test. There is also an NNTP-based netnews reader for Symbolics Lisp Machines (under Genera 7) available for anonymous FTP from ucbvax.berkeley.edu [128.32.133.1] in pub/nntp-clients/lispm written by Ian Connolly and maintained by Richard Welty . In addition, another NNTP-based news browser is available running under Genera 7 and Genera 8. It provides mouse driven hierarchic browsing of newsgroups and articles, with support for X11 servers on remote machines. It is available for anonymous FTP on flash.bellcore.com [128.96.32.20] in the directory pub/lispm/news-reader/. It is written and maintained by Peter Clitherow A TOPS-20 reader was developed by Dave Edwards of SRI , but current availability is unknown. An NNTP reader suite for PC's running MS-DOS and having Excelan boards is available for ftp from ames.arc.nasa.gov; get the pcrrn files. There are two MS-DOS news readers that can be obtained from bcm.tmc.edu in the "nfs" directory. They both require PC-NFS (from Sun) to work. They will both work under PC/TCP from FTP Software early this year. Source will be provided at that time. "trumpet" is a NNTP based news reader for DOS which will also run under Windows (although only as a DOS application). There is Lan Workplace version which is also available. It runs over packet drivers, which can work side-by-side with a Novell Network. For information on the Crynwr Packet Driver Collection, send mail to or send a FAX to +1-315-268-9201. Trumpet offers a very intuitive interface with most of the basic facilities required in a newsreader (but without some of the 'bells and whistles found in something like rn). It has facilities for using SMTP to forward/reply etc. The latest version is 1.07 and is shareware available at most main ftp sites. trumpet ftp.utas.edu.au:/pc/trumpet/ wintrumpet ftp.utas.edu.au:/pc/trumpet/wintrump/*.* "WinVN" is a public domain NNTP newsreader for Microsoft Windows and Windows NT. There are versions available for WINSOCK, Novell LWP, and DEC Pathworks/LanMan. It supports the XOVER extension, and can display articles in thread trees. SMTP and MAPI outgoing mail are supported. The latest version is 0.91.4. Sources and binaries are always available from: ftp.ksc.nasa.gov:[.pub.win3.winvn]. ripem.msu.edu:/pub/pc/win/winvn/titan.ksc.nasa.gov (mirror). Details on several newsreaders for systems running "Waffle" may be found in the FAQ posted to the comp.bbs.waffle newsgroup on a regular basis. At least 8 different readers are available, and all can be obtained via ftp and mailserver from ftp.halcyon.com (look in /pub/waffle/news). Details on many other mail and news readers for MSDOS, Windows and OS/2 systems can be found in the FAQ posted to the comp.os.msdos.mail-news. At least one IBM VM/SP (CMS) version of the Usenet software is available. It is known as PSU NetNews, and it is maintained by Linda Littleton (lrl@psuvm.bitnet/psuvm.psu.edu). Version 2.4 of the software is available from LISTSERV@PSUVM. PSU NetNews supports only 3270 terminals, and uses XEDIT as its screen driver. Most major VM sites appear to use this package. NetNews supports locally-stored news, not NNTP reading. Since January 1993, a complete NNTP server is available for VM systems. It provides news reading, posting and feed processing compatible to the Unix NNTP implementations. The code is written in IBM's VM Rexx. It assumes that you already have installed PSU VM NETNEWS. The VM NNTP package, written by Kris Van Hees (gutest6@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be) who also takes care of the maintenance. The current version is 1.0.1 and requires IBM's FAL TCP/IP and Arty Ecock's RXSOCKET which is available from the IBMTCP FIELLIST on listserv@pucc. The VM NNTP package can be obtained from the NNTP PACKAGE on listserv@blekul11. There is NNTP support for PSU NetNews for bulk news receipt: NNTPXFER will poll another site for news, and NNTPRCVR will receive news sent from a Unix NNTPXMIT process. Either program sends the news articles to NetNews for processing. Contact Andy Hooper (hooper@qucdn.bitnet or qucdn.queensu.ca) for more information, or obtain them from listserv@qucdn in PUBLIC FILELIST. These programs are provided with source, and require IBM's FAL TCP/IP and Pascal. An NNTPXMIT sender that works in cooperation with PSU NETNEWS is available from Herman Van Uytven (SYSTHVU@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be). There is at least one NNTP news-reader for VM using XEDIT as its screen manager: NNR. Contact Paul Campbell (pc@mbunix.mitre.org) for information. The program requires IBM's FAL TCP/IP. The software is available for anonymous ftp from ftp.uni-stuttgart.de in the directory pub/comm/news/beginner/software/nnr/*. An NNTP news reader is available for TSO/ISPF, called NNMVS. NNMVS is written by Steve Bacher at Draper Laboratory. It requires C/370 V1R2 or SAS/C; ISPF V2; and TCP/IP for MVS (either IBM's "FAL" or SNS). It is now available via anonymous ftp at ftp.uni-stuttgart.de under the directory /pub/comm/news/beginner/software/nnmvs and from ftp.mic.ucla.edu, directory /pub/mvs/netnews. The current version is Version 3 Release 2. There's also an object-code-only distribution for folks without C compilers, but that's an at-your-own-risk distribution, and requires the IBM C/370 run-time library. The source code distribution can be compiled with either C/370 or SAS/C. Newsfeed management software ------------------------ Gup, the Group Update Program is a Unix mail-server program that lets a remote site change their newsgroups subscription on their news feed without requiring the intervention of the news administrator at the feed site. Gup operates with the INN (and likely the C News) batching mechanisms. The news administrators at the remote sites simply mail commands to gup to make changes to their own site's subscription list. The mail/interface is password protected. Gup checks the requests for valid newsgroup names, patterns that have no effect and so on. Gup's authors are Mark Delany and Andrew Herbert . Its official ftp location is bushwire.mira.net.au:/pub/external/gup-0.4.tar.gz, but since that's not as well connected as uunet, people are strongly advised to obtain it from a mirror site. eg. ftp.uu.net:/networking/news/misc/gup-0.4.tar.gz dynafeed is a package from Looking Glass Software Limited that maintains a .newsrc for every remote site and generates the batches for them. Remote sites can use uucp or run a program to change their .newsrc dynamically. It comes with a program that the remote site can run to monitor readership in newsgroups and dynamically update the feed list to match reader interest. The goal of this is to get a feed that sends only exactly the groups currently being read. dynafeed can be obtained from ftp.clarinet.com as sources/dynafeed.tar.Z. News processing software ------------------------ Software also exists to automatically archive Usenet newsgroups. The package rkive, written by Kent Landfield can be configured to archive news automatically based on different headers -- Archive-Name, Volume-Issue, Chronological, Subject and External-Command to name a few. It can be run in batch mode from the command line or from cron. It can also be installed in the sys/newsfeeds file to process articles as they are received. rkive supports local spool directories as well as NNTP based access. rkive is available via ftp from ftp.sterling.com in the directory /rkive. Newsclip is a programming language for writing news filtering programs, from Looking Glass Software Limited, marketed by ClariNet Communications Corp. It is C-like, and translates to C, so a C compiler is required. It has data-types to represent the kinds of things found in article headers and bodies. It can maintain databases of users, message-ids, patterns, subjects, etc. These can be used to decide whether to ignore or select an article. Newsclip can either operate as a standalone program or as part of rn. It is free for non-commercial use and is available from ftp.clarinet.com as sources/nc.tar.Z. Contact clari-info@clarinet.com with a subject line of "newsclip" for more info. Special note on "notes" and old versions of news ------------------------------------------------ Many years ago, there was another distributed "news" system called "notes". The "notes" software package used a different internal organization of articles, and a different interchange format than that of the standard Usenet software. It was inspired by the notesfiles available in the PLATO system and was developed independently from the Usenet news. Eventually, the "notes" network and Usenet were joined via gateways doing (sometimes imperfect) protocol translation. "notes" was written in 1980-1981 by Ray Essick and Rob Kolstad, (then) grad students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The first public release of "notes" was at the January 1982 Usenix conference. The last release of notes was version 1.7; it is no longer being actively maintained. "B" news software is currently considered obsolete. Unix sites joining the Usenet should install C news or INN to ensure proper behavior and good performance. Most old B news software had compiled-in limits on the number of newsgroups and the number of articles per newsgroup; the increasing volume of news means that B news software cannot reliably cope with a moderately-full newsfeed. Software versions & availability -------------------------------- You can obtain the version number of your news software by issuing some form of "v" command to show the current version -- consult the man page for details. Current software is obtainable from almost any major Usenet site as well as the sites noted in the body of the article, above. The following sites probably have sources to the current news software available for anyone needing a copy: Site Contact ---- ------- munnari kre@munnari.oz.au osu-cis postmaster@cis.ohio-state.edu philabs usenet@philabs.philips.com pyramid usenet@pyramid.com rutgers usenet@rutgers.edu tektronix news@tektronix.tek.com watmath usenet@watmath.waterloo.edu uunet info@uunet.uu.net Sources for most of the news readers and software, including news 2.11, C News, "rn", and "trn" are also available in the comp.sources.unix archives. European sites should request the sources from their nearest backbone site. The "archie" service can be used to locate ftp archives containing various news software packages. There are regular postings in the comp.answers newsgroup about how to use the "archie" service. For a relatively low price, you can buy one of many CD-ROM distributions of freely-redistributable software. This may be cheaper than a long-distance phone call. Standards --------- News programs communicate with each other according to standard protocols, some of which are described by RFCs. An RFC is a Request For Comment, a de facto standard in the Internet Community. It is a form of software standard, published by the Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC). Copies of RFCs are often posted to the net and obtainable from archive sites. Current news-related RFCs include the following: RFC 822 specifies the format of messages; RFC 1036 uses this. RFC 977 specifies NNTP, the Network News Transfer Protocol. RFC 1036 specifies the format of Usenet articles. RFC 1123 amends RFC 822. RFC 1153 specifies the digest format some moderated groups use. See the accompanying posting "How to Get Information about Networks" for instructions on getting copies of the RFCs. Henry Spencer has a draft of a successor to RFC1036 that attempts to document and explain all subsequent enhancements and existing practice as implemented in the newer news systems. This draft (often called son-of-1036) can be obtained by anonymous ftp from ftp.zoo.toronto.edu as /pub/news.txt.Z (the text version) or /pub/news.ps.Z (a PostScript version). Son-of-1036 is intended to be stand-alone reading and does not require that one also read RFCs 822 or 1123. Newsgroups ---------- The following newsgroups cover issues discussed in this article, and can be consulted for recent developments. bit.listserv.netnws-l Discussion about NetNews on VM systems. gnu.emacs.gnews News reading under GNU Emacs using Weemba's Gnews. gnu.emacs.gnus News reading under GNU Emacs using GNUS (in English). news.software.anu-news VMS B-news software from Australian National Univ. news.software.b Discussion about B-news-compatible software. news.software.nn Discussion about the "nn" news reader package. news.software.notes Notesfile software from the Univ. of Illinois. news.software.readers General discussion about news reading software. news.software.nntp The Network News Transfer Protocol. comp.os.msdos.mail-news Administering mail & network news systems under MS-DOS. comp.protocols.tcp-ip TCP and IP network protocols. comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc TCP/IP for IBM(-like) personal computers. alt.usenet.offline-reader Packages for reading mail/news off-line. The following periodic postings in the news.software.b and news.answers newsgroups are useful for people interested in news transport software. Mark Linimon "News.software.b: Introduction to news.software.b" Mark Linimon "News.software.b Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)" Mark Linimon "C News Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)" Rob Robertson "FAQ: Overview database / NOV General Information" Tom Limoncelli "INN FAQ Part 1/4: General Information" Tom Limoncelli "INN FAQ Part 2/4: Debugging Guide & Tutorial" Tom Limoncelli "INN FAQ Part 3/4: Operational and Misc. Questions" Tom Limoncelli "INN FAQ Part 4/4: Appendix A: Norman's install guide" The following FAQ is posted periodically to news.software.anu-news and news.answers. Bob Sloane "FAQ: news.software.anu-news" Users on MS-DOS machines should take a look at the FAQ posted periodically to comp.os.msdos.mail-news. Russell Schulz "comp.os.msdos.mail-news FAQ (01/02) intro" Russell Schulz "comp.os.msdos.mail-news FAQ (02/02) intro" The following FAQs posted to alt.usenet.offline-reader and news.answers are useful for people interested in off-line news readers. Russell Schulz "alt.usenet.offline-reader FAQ (01/02) intro" Russell Schulz "alt.usenet.offline-reader FAQ (02/02) software" Acknowledgements ---------------- The preparation of this article (and Usenet itself!) was greatly enhanced by the contributions and assistance of the following persons: Steve Bellovin, Ray Essick, Mark Horton, Brian Kantor, Phil Lapsley, Bob Page, Rich Salz, Tom Truscott, and Larry Wall. Thanks, folks. -- Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett krshnbtt@acf2.nyu.edu FAX: 212-254-7885 TEL: 212-998-1628 Department of Performance Studies, 721 Broadway, 6th fl, New York, NY 10003