Last revision April 29, 2005
Network news groups are simply an organized form of electronic bulletin board that spans the entire Internet. Computers on the Internet cooperate to circulate messages posted by readers, called postings or articles. Articles must be posted to particular news groups. News groups are read and submissions are posted not via email, but with a special news reader program.
There are currently thousands of possible news groups. Some receive one posting per day, others several hundred per day.
News groups always have the same name, no matter which computer you access them from. However, not all computers carry the same set of news groups. Local groups can be created on a particular computer or in an organization, which do not circulate outside. Some computer managers may refuse to carry news groups that they consider non-essential, particularly if there are limits on disk space or resources. There are some commercial news groups, such as the UPI news service (begin with clari prefix), which you must buy; not all computer sites carry these.
The news groups are organized in a hierarchical scheme of categories and subcategories. A group name is made up of the various categories and subcategories, separated by dots (periods). For example, computer-related news groups are all in the main category comp, with subcategories such as ai (artificial intelligence), arch (specific hardware architectures), binaries (distribute pre-compiled software), graphics (discussion of graphics programs), lang (specific languages such as Fortran), sources (distribution of programs in source code form), sys (questions or discussions related to specific brands or types of computer systems), etc. Within the sys subcategory, for example, you might have additional subcategories such as ibm, mac, next, etc. These might even be further subdivided, as for example, these mac groups:
comp.sys.mac.announce
comp.sys.mac.apps
comp.sys.mac.comm
comp.sys.mac.databases
comp.sys.mac.digest
comp.sys.mac.games
comp.sys.mac.graphics
comp.sys.mac.hardware
comp.sys.mac.hypercard
comp.sys.mac.misc
comp.sys.mac.oop.macapp3
comp.sys.mac.oop.misc
comp.sys.mac.oop.tcl
comp.sys.mac.portables
comp.sys.mac.programmer
comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior
comp.sys.mac.scitech
comp.sys.mac.system
comp.sys.mac.wanted
As you can see, the actual news group name is made of all the categories and subcategories that define it, separated by dots.
Postings received by a computer site are numbered consecutively within the news group. However, not all sites use the same number for the same posting. Numbers vary depending upon when the site started their sequence, and in what order they receive postings from other sites.
To read the articles in a news group, or to post a message yourself, you must use a news reader program. All modern ones are setup to download the desired articles on demand over the network from a special news server computer, using the nntp protocol (based on TCP/IP).
WARNING: Email "spammers" who flood us with junk email messages, regularly "harvest" email addresses from postings on network news groups. Do not post a message using your normal email account. Instead, get a "throw-away" free email account (for example, Yahoo or Hotmail. See the web page Using spam filters on pangea for more information on how to avoid spam email.
The primary news server system on campus, maintained by the Information Technology Systems and Services group, is nntp.stanford.edu. When configuring your news reader program, enter that name as the news or nntp server. This server carries more than 5000 news groups, including many set up specifically for Stanford classes, plus other general interest Stanford-only groups, for example
| su.computers | general Stanford computing questions |
| su.market | general for sale bulletin board |
The pine email program that runs on pangea also doubles as a news group reader, in text only mode. From the main menu, use the L key to see a list of folder collections. Select News on nntp.stanford.edu/nntp and press the RETURN key. This puts you into a News groups Folder List where you can read and post messages in news groups just as if they were email messages. You first have to subscribe to groups (see below).
In general, Macintosh and Windows PC news reader programs are more convenient than Unix programs like pine because they have better navigation features and allow you to see graphics that may be posted with articles. You can download a special news reader program for a Macintosh or Windows PC from any standard software archive -- search for "news reader" and be sure to select a program that advertises itself as a Usenet or nntp reader. If you have the free Netscape Communicator web browsing program, it also has a built-in news reader -- simply select Mail and Newsgroups from the Tasks or Window menu (depending upon your version).
News reader programs use the concept of subscription to indicate which news groups you are following. They will only show you new articles from the groups to which you have subscribed. In Macintosh or Windows PC news reader program, you typically have a Subscibe menu option that shows you all possible news groups available on your configured news server. In the pine program on pangea, once in the News groups window, you use the A key to add another news group to your Folder List, which is your subscription list.
Because there are so many news groups, you must be selective and subscribe only to those of particular interest to you. This is particularly important with the xrn UNIX news reader, which will allocate enough system memory to accommodate all the groups, and thus hog pangea's memory, unless you limit it to only a few (say, less than 100).
A Student's Guide to Unix, by Harley Hahn, on permanent reserve in Branner Earth Sciences Library, has a good annotated list of the main news groups which will help you decide which groups you want to read.For many news groups, there is a volunteer who maintains a file of Frequently Asked Questions and their answers. These FAQ files are excellent sources of information for newcomers to a topic area, and should be consulted first before posting a question to a news group. FAQs from all news groups are also posted in the news.answers news group, which is saved at archive sites and made available via anonymous ftp. One of those sites is:
rtfm.mit.edu
This computer at MIT archives "just the FAQs" that are posted to network news groups in the directory /pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/. Look particularly in the subfolder news/answers. For example, one of the FAQ files there is finding-sources which tells you how to locate source code for computer programs on network archives. Another is ftp-list/faq, which is an annotated list of anonymous ftp sites on the internet (unfortunately not updated in several years).