Unit 3-4 Newsgroups

After completing this unit, you will be able to:

• Understand how Usenet newsgroups originated as a grassroots effort by students who wanted a better way to organize conversations over the Internet.
• Visualize how the hierarchical structure of a newsgroup mirrors the manner in which physical conferences are organized.
• Use your Web browser to list the newsgroups available through your Internet service provider.
• Subscribe to the newsgroups of your choice.
• Read and respond to topics in a newsgroup and post new topics that you want to initiate.
• Understand the difference between moderated and unmoderated newsgroups.
• Know when it is too late to cancel a message that you have written in a newsgroup.
• Find out about newsgroups in your field of study or line of work.
• Understand the difference between newsgroups and Web-based discussion forums
• Learn how to create your own Web-based discussion forum on the Internet

Reading

Read chapter 8 of the Internet Literacy textbook to study the concepts covered by this unit.

Online Activities

Wonderful as they may be, electronic mail and listserv have some shortcomings. While electronic mail is a great way for individuals to exchange messages with each other, and listserv makes it easy to send mail to lists of people, it's not easy to maintain your train of thought in a conversation conducted via e-mail. That's because e-mail queues up in your inbox on a variety of topics, requiring your mind to shift gears continually as you read mail on different subjects. Enter the Usenet Newsgroup, a resource invented in the late 1970s by students who wanted a better way to converse over the Internet on specific topics. In this unit, you will learn how Usenet Newsgroups enable users to hold virtual conferences over the Internet. You will find out what newsgroups exist in your profession, learn how to join and participate in a newsgroup, and know how to go about creating a new newsgroup.

• Before you can read news, you need to configure your newsgroup client. To learn how, follow the steps in Table 8-1.
• Your ISP subscribes to a number of newsgroups from which you can choose one or more that you would like to read. For help learning how to choose a newsgroup, follow the steps in Table 8-2.
• Newsgroups are threaded. Each thread represents a different topic being discussed in the newsgroup. To read a newsgroup, you point-and-click on the topics and subtopics to navigate to the part of the newsgroup you want to read. To see how, step through the tutorial in Table 8-3.
• Responding to a newsgroup is a lot like responding to an e-mail message. The main difference is that instead of being sent to an individual, your response gets posted to the newsgroup. Table 8-4 steps you through the process of responding to a newsgroup.
• While participating in a newsgroup, you may want to start a conversation on a new topic. Table 8-5 teaches you how to create a new topic in a newsgroup.
• Two rules govern the deleting of messages from a newsgroup. First, you can only delete messages that you write. You cannot delete messages written by other users. Second, you should only delete messages to which no one has responded yet. If another user has written a reply in the newsgroup to one of your messages, deleting your message will interrupt the flow of the conversation. To learn how to delete a message in a newsgroup, follow the steps in Table 8-6.

Assignment

After you complete this unit, you will be ready to complete the assignment that asks you to join and participate in the course newsgroup:

• Every student in this class is required to participate in the course newsgroup. The name of the newsgroup for this course is udel.internet.literacy. You can go there by pointing your browser at news://news.udel.edu/udel.internet.literacy. Please join in the conversations you will find in progress there, and initiate new topics as you wish.