Date: Wed, 08 Jan 1997 21:31:38 GMT Server: NCSA/1.4.2 Content-type: text/html Introduction to News (using Netscape)

Introduction to News (using Netscape)


Executive Summary: This document is designed to give some tips on reading news to aid students who don't have a strong background in using newsgroups

What are newsgroups?

Newsgroups are one of several means for people to communicate using the internet. Articles can be posted to a newsgroup by an individual, and read by anyone who has access to that newsgroup. In several ways, news is superior to e-mail in a group setting, in that it:

For these reasons, most class-related conversations are well-suited for the course newsgroup, since they will be sorted by subject, and everyone can read the articles whenever they choose.

Accessing Newsgroups

There are a number of programs available for reading news, and each one has its own method of displaying news and allowing you to read it. Since most people are familiar with using the web, we'll concentrate here on reading news using netscape.

In order to get to a particular newsgroup using netscape, you simply need to access the URL: news:<name.of.newsgroup> For example, the newsgroup for our class is called uw-cs.courses.cse341, so the URL that you would point netscape to is: news:uw-cs.courses.cse341. There is a link set up on the main course page which will take you direcly to the newsgroup as well.

Reading and Posting Articles in a Newsgroup

Once in a newsgroup, you will see an icon bar (see Figure 1 below), the name of the newsgroup, a list of the articles which you haven't read yet, and a second copy of the same icon bar. The articles will be organized according to threads of conversation. That is, whenever a new article is posted, it will be entered into the list. Any follow-up articles will be indented below it, responses to the follow-up will be posted below them, etc. Each article has a subject, the author's name, and its length (in lines).

Figure 1 The newsgroup icon bar

The Post New Article icon allows you to post a new article to the newsgroup, which will start a new thread. Mark All Articles Read will cause all articles to be marked as though you had read them when you access the newsgroup in the future. Show Read Articles displays all articles posted to the newsgroup, whether or not you've already read them. Unsubscribe will take this newsgroup off of the list of those which you are subscribed to. Subscribed newsgroups will take you to a list of all newsgroups which you are currently subscribed to.

To read an article, simply click on its entry. This will take you to a new page with a different icon bar (see Figure 2 below) and the article itself. Each article has a header telling who it was posted by, when, which newsgroups it was posted to, and the actual text of the article. Articles which were follow-ups will also have reference links to the original articles which they refer to. To mail a private response to the article's author, click on his or her name in the article header.

Figure 2 The article icon bar

The first two icons in the bar will take you to the previous and next articles in the current thread of conversation (if any). The next two icons take you to the previous and next threads of conversation (if any). The Mark Thread Read icon will mark all articles in the current thread of conversation as being read, and will skip over them in the future. This Newsgroup will take you back to the listing of all articles in the newsgroup. Subscribed Newsgroups will take you to the list of all newsgroups that you are currently suscribed to. Post reply allows you to post a reply about the current article to the newsgroup. Mail & Post Reply does the same thing, and also mails a copy of your reply to the person whose article you're replying to.

Posting Articles and Mailing Responses

If you click on an article's author's name, use Post New Article, Post Reply or, Mail & Post Reply, a new window will open up allowing you to type your response. This window will have slots for your email address, a recipient's email address, a newsgroup, a subject, and an attachment. Depending on which of the above options you chose, most of these slots will be filled in for you. In some cases, you may need to supply a subject. There will also be a large space for the message itself. Type your article or response and then hit "send". The message will then be mailed to everyone in the Mail To: slot and posted to all newsgroups in the Post To: slot.

Keeping up with News

When reading news in netscape, you will need to re-load a newsgroup's page from time to time to get new articles which have come in. New articles may be posted to the newsgroup at any time, but netscape will only update your list when you actually reload the page. At that point, it will show you an updated list of articles which you haven't read.

Additionally, when posting to newsgroups, it generally takes a bit of time for the article to show up on the group (usually no more than a minute). This is just due to the fact that the article must be circulated throughout all the computers which subscribe to that newsgroup.

Testing News

To prevent newsgroups from getting jammed up with messages saying "this is a test -- please ignore", a few newsgroups exist for people to post test messages to. One of these is called news.test. If you'd like to practice with news, do some posting here, and nobody will mind. I posted a few articles there in typing up this page, so you might look for those and post follow-up articles as practice. Here's a link to the group: news:news.test. Put something like "please ignore" or "no reply necessary" in your message, or you will get mail back from an automatic mailer telling you that you posted to the newsgroup.
Shamelessly stolen from cse341 Winter '96

grove@cs.washington.edu (Last update: 03/21/96 at 02PM )