6. News

Internet newsgroups, often referred to as Usenet or News, are one of the liveliest areas of the Internet and one of the most interactive. You can read the opinions of people who share your interests (however bizarre) across the world, and add your own comments to the discussion.

6.1 What are newsgroups?

Each newsgroup is organised around a particular theme to cover a specific topic. The list of all newsgroups is very long indeed - at the time of writing there were over 17000.

Subscribers to a group read messages posted to the newsgroup, then add their own comments. A newsgroup can contain several different discussions going on at once - these are known as threads.

Some newsgroups are `moderated' so messages are not posted directly. All postings to the group are assessed by the moderator, who assesses incoming articles, and posts them if they fit in with the criteria of the newsgroup.

• An example of a moderated group is comp.sys.acorn.announce, which contains announcements from companies in the Acorn market.

Organisation of groups

Newsgroups are organised in a hierarchy to reflect their purpose, subject matter and level of specialisation.

The first part or parts of a newsgroup's name cover the general topic, or nature of the group, and the latter part or parts cover the specific topics.

For example, there are many groups under the general heading computer, shown as comp. One major part of these groups discuss particular systems, so the first part of their names is comp.sys.

The next part of the name shows the computer system being discussed, for example comp.sys.acorn. And a final part indicates the precise topic of the group, for example comp.sys.acorn.hardware discusses Acorn and Acorn-related hardware.

Some of the main classifications of groups are:

alt Alternative issues, less formal discussions. You may find that your access to some alt.* groups is limited by your service provider or host because the subject matter is deemed controversial or likely to cause offence.

biz Business-related topics.

comp Computers and related issues, including machine-specific topics.

misc Miscellaneous discussions.

news News and information about Usenet itself.

rec Recreational subjects

sci Scientific subjects.

soc Social issues.

talk Debate and discussion, often heated or boisterous.

In addition, many countries, cities and organisations (such as Internet service providers) have their own newsgroups, for more local discussions or subjects of restricted interest. A newsgroup discussing national politics may be of interest only in one country, while a newsgroup discussing pubs is probably more relevant to a specific city. For example:

uk.* UK specific topics

aus.* Australian topics

cam.misc General discussions about Cambridge, UK

demon.announce News from service provider Demon

Many US universities have their own newsgroups, and you may find that your university does too, for example:

ucam Cambridge University discussion groups

uwarwick Warwick University discussion groups

Provision of newsgroups

Not all service providers give you automatic access to all Usenet newsgroups. The volume of traffic generated by Usenet means that some providers may cut down the list of groups carried to save space.

Many groups are local in coverage and therefore not carried by servers on the other side of the world. If you want to stay in touch with a local group from far away your service provider may be able to get it for you.

• Some service providers may choose not to pass on groups which they perceive as likely to contain unethical or illegal material. This is particularly true of family and education-oriented service providers. However, there is no guarantee that explict or illegal material will not be posted to any newsgroup.

Articles and threads

Readers of newsgroups post articles to them, contributing to the discussion or starting a new topic of discussion. These on-going topics are called threads. Marcel groups together all messages in a thread, so you don't see messages in the order in which they were posted but in an order which makes it easier to read them.

Usenet culture

Discussions, especially on controversial topics, can get quite heated. When an argument breaks out it is referred to as a `flame'. Discussions are expected to stay `on-topic', that is, relevant to the group hosting them.

Messages which are indiscriminately cross-posted (copies of the same article placed in many different, irrelevant groups) are not appreciated and are referred to as `spam'.

6.2 Setting up news

There are several steps you must take before reading news offline.

Most of the process is carried out in the Configuration utility. Here you can determine:

• Which newsgroups to download (offline users) or to display the contents of (online users)
• Whether to fetch the full text of a given group or only the headers of articles (offline users only)
• How long messages should be stored before they are expired (deleted) from your hard disc (offline users only).

Configuring Marcel for news

You should complete the following dialogue box to set up your news, by choosing News setup from the Marcel choices dialogue:

1 Enter the details of the news Servers you will be using to read and post news, if you are working online.

• If you are reading news offline, these options should be switched off.

2 Enter the General settings you require:

• To save copies of articles you post, tick the Save sent news box and enter the name of a Marcel folder.
• Select the default format for encoding file attachments to news articles. As a rule you should avoid attaching files to news articles: if it is appropriate to attach a file, you should use the default setting of UUencode. To change the file encoding format, click the Menu button and select an option from the pop-up list. The choices are the same as those for sending mail file attachments.
• To Display newsgroups when loaded, tick the box. This displays the list of groups you subscribe to when you load the Marcel newsreader

3 Click Close and then Save in the Marcel choices dialogue to save and confirm your settings.

6.3 Connecting Marcel to a news server

To read and work with news you need to connect Marcel to a server for news.

1. Click on the Marcel pillar box icon (it doesn't matter if it is red or grey, but if a mail user is connected only that user can log into news).
2. Choose News from the icon bar menu.
3. The Connect to news server dialogue will be displayed:
4. Select the required user by choosing from the pop-up list.
5. Enter a password if required.
6. Click Connect. The list of your subscribed groups will be displayed:

• Groups with unread messages are shown in black, and groups with no unread messages in grey.
• The number of read messages and the total number of messages is shown for each group.

6.4 Subscribing to newsgroups

Before you can download and read messages in a group you must subscribe to it. This enables Marcel and the Internet Suite to collect the group's messages from the news server at your service provider

• Offline users should check whether a group they want is already being fetched by another local user. If it is not, you will need to use the News setup section of the Configuration utility to add the group to the list of those which are fetched - see Subscribing to newsgroups.

List of all groups

You may already know which groups you want to read. If you don't, check the list of newsgroups in the News setup section of the configuration utility.

The ANT Internet Suite requires a list of groups to allow newsgroup subscription requests to be verified. The following Usenet newsgroup prefixes are included in the default list:

• alt.*, except alt.sex.* and alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.*
• aus.*
• bionet.*
• bit.*
• biz.*
• cam.*
• comp.*
• demon.*
• gnu.*
• ieee.*
• info.*
• linux.*
• misc.*
• news.*
• nz.*
• pipex.*
• rec.*
• sci.*
• soc.*
• talk.*
• uk.*

ANT has provided this list solely for the verification of newsgroup names. ANT has edited this list only to remove those groups whose carriage over the Internet or through our software we believe may potentially be illegal, or offensive to some customers.

If this file is deleted then the equivalent file from your service provider is fetched automatically by the Internet Suite, a process which may take a considerable period of time. The unedited file would typically be over 500KB.

• Overseas users should check with their service provider for details of local newsgroups, for example newsgroups in languages other than English.
• Ultimately the selection of groups available to you is determined by your service provider. Your provider may be able to fetch additional groups other than those they currently offer but this is not guaranteed.
• Note that there is a turnover of newsgroups and some are abandoned as discussion moves on. Other groups, notably in the alt categories, are created to commemorate a particular event, or even set up as a joke.

Your own list of groups

• Remember that the level of traffic on many groups can be quite high. Some groups may receive thousands of postings a day: others, especially moderated groups, only a handful each week. That can add up to lengthy downloads and the consumption of a large amount of hard disc space.

Marcel is shipped preconfigured to download certain newsgroups including those relating to Acorn computers and the very useful news.announce.newusers group which provides regular introductory articles on Usenet usage and culture.

Subscribing

To subscribe to a group:

1. Display your list of subscribed newsgroups by choosing News from the Marcel icon bar menu and connecting.
2. Choose View all from the Groups menu to display the list of groups which are currently being downloaded (offline users) or the full list of groups (online users).
3. If the group you want is not in this list you will need to subscribe to it using the Configuration utility: see Subscribing to newsgroups for details.
4. Drag the required group's icon into your list of groups, or choose Subscribe from the Groups menu and type in the name of the group you want.
5. Press Return.
6. The new group will be added to your list:

Note that there is no way of checking who reads any particular newsgroup. The only way other participants will know you are there is if you make a posting to the group. It is perfectly acceptable to read a group without making postings: you may see this referred to as `lurking' but this has no negative connotation.

Unsubscribing

You may decide that you no longer wish to read a particular newsgroup or to download its messages.

To unsubscribe from a group:

1. Display your list of subscribed groups by clicking on the Marcel news icon.
2. Select the group(s) you no longer wish to read.
3. Choose Unsubscribe from the Group menu.

• If you are the only offline user you should also unsubscribe the group within the Configuration utility to prevent it from being downloaded. See Subscribing to newsgroups.

Group information

There are three forms of information about newsgroups which can help you decide what groups to read, or to understand the purpose of groups to which you are subscribed.

• Note that not all groups have all or any of the following: in particular joke groups or other groups in the alt.* hierarchy rarely have charters.

You can get any of these by selecting the group in your list of groups and choosing the relevant option from the Group menu, though you will need to be online for the last two options to work.

• Description. A one-line description of the group summarising its subject area.
• FAQ. A list of questions (Frequently Asked Questions) about the subject matter of the group, along with answers. You should download and read this before posting any questions to a group.
• Charter. This document is produced when the group is started and outlines its purpose. Again, it is a good idea to read it before posting to the group.

6.5 Downloading news

Online news users read articles directly from the server. A list of articles is displayed by Marcel and when you open each one its text is fetched from the server.

Offline users must download news articles to their computers before reading them. There are two options for downloading newsgroups:

• Full download. The full text of all messages is fetched each time you connect to your service provider and transfer news. The advantages are that you get the full text of each message to read: the disadvantages are that your hard disc may fill up and regular lengthy downloads may be required.
• Headers only. This fetches only the header information (title, author etc) of each article, saving time when downloading. You can skim the list of titles, mark the articles that interest you, then connect again to your service provider to fetch their full text. The advantages are that you don't pay to download articles you don't want to read: the disadvantage is that you may miss some articles that you might have found interesting.

In practice many offline users will combine the two methods, downloading the full text of the groups most important to them and headers of groups of less complete interest. See Newsgroup management on page 4-28 for full details.

Downloading news for offline users

To download news:

1. Load the Internet Suite application on to the icon bar.
2. Choose Connect from the icon bar menu. The Suite will dial and connect to your service provider.
3. Once the icon bar text changes to Online, choose News from the Transfer menu.
4. The Suite will connect to your provider's news server, download new articles

6.6 Reading news

Once you have subscribed to a group you can read its messages by opening the newsgroup window and then opening articles to read.

Newsgroup windows

The articles in a newsgroup are displayed in a list like the mail inbox. Three views are available, controlled by options on the Display menu:

• Full info displays a full text or header only icon, article title up to a certain number of characters, flag, size, author and date
• Wide info displays a full text or header only icon, a wider subject field, flag, size, author and date and time
• Brief info (shown below) simply lists the message title and author.

Articles may have a status flag:

• A indicates an article to which a reply has been sent
• H indicates that only the article header has been downloaded (Offline news only)
• K keep option (locks it)

Articles can be displayed in a variety of sort orders. To change the order of articles, click Menu within the newsgroup window and choose an option from the Display menu.

• The default setting, Sort threaded, is the alphabetical order of the subject discussions (threads) to which they belong.
• Sort by date sorts either by the date articles were Received or Sent, depending on the option you select from the Date submenu. Articles are listed with the most recent appearing first.
• Sort by sender sorts alphabetically by the name of the sender of the article.
• Reversed sort reverses the order of any sort option so that articles are listed oldest first or Z-A rather than A-Z.

Working with articles

From the newsgroup listing you can:

• Open an article and read it: double-click on the article title.
• Select an article or group of articles to work with.
• Mark header-only articles so that the full text is fetched next time you transfer news: select the article and choose Fetch all from the Article menu.
• Post a reply to the newsgroup: see Posting a reply on page 6-120 below.
• Post a reply by mail to the author: see Sending a reply by mail on page 6-121.
• Save the article as a text document or print a hard copy of it
• Forward the article by mail.
• Bounce (redirect) the article by mail.
• Capture the author's address in your address book.

To perform operations from the Articles menu you must first select an article or group of articles

• To select a single article, click once on its title.
• To select several articles, click Adjust on their titles.
• To select a group of articles, hold down the Ctrl key and drag the selection rectangle over the articles you want to select. If a group of articles is selected, the Article menu is replaced by the Selection menu.

Articles are shown in black until you open them to read them, when they are greyed out. The way articles that have been read are handled depends on whether you are reading news on- or offline.

• For offline users, read (greyed out) articles are not shown next time you open the newsgroup window, but the downloaded articles are not deleted until they are expired - see Expiring news on page 6-124.
• For online users, read (greyed out) articles will not be displayed next time you open the newsgroup. If you want a local copy of the article you should save it outside Marcel.

Saving articles

If you are reading news online you must save articles outside Marcel if you want to keep them.

You can save articles from the newsgroup window or from the article window.

To save the article as a file:

1. Select the article within the newsgroup window or open it.
2. Click the Save button or click Menu within the window and choose Save from the Article menu.
3. Drag the file icon to the filer window where you want to save it.

Printing articles

You can print copies of articles. To print an article:

1. Select or open the required article.
2. Choose Print from the Article menu.
3. Click Print in the Print dialogue box.
4. A copy of the article will be printed using the current printer driver.

The article window

To read an article, double-click on it in the Newsgroup list. An article window will appear:

Rather than close the window and open a further article from the newsgroup window, you can use the Article window buttons to browse through the list of articles:

• Click Select on the Previous thread button to jump to the previous thread.
• Click Select on the Previous article button to jump to the previous article.
• Click Select on the Next article button to jump to the next article.
• Click Select on the Next thread button to jump to the next thread.

To wrap text within the window set the width to which text is wrapped (the default is 80 characters):

1. Set a maximum window width. Click Menu inside the article window and display the Display submenu.
2. Display the Window width submenu from the Display submenu and enter the required figure. Press Return.
3. Tick the Window wrap option on the Display submenu (it is ticked by default).

To display full article headers:

1. Click Menu within the Article menu.
2. Display the Display submenu.
3. Choose Full headers.
4. The full headers of the article will be shown. These include additional information used by the newsreader such as the full path of the article, .

• The Article menu offers similar options to the Article menu in the main newsgroup listing (see above).

6.7 Posting articles

Before you start posting articles to a group:

• Get a feeling for the group and its membership by reading it for a while (this is often referred to as `lurking').
• Read the section below on Usenet etiquette, and the relevant articles posted to news.announce.newusers.
• Read the FAQ and Charter of the newsgroup (see Group information).

Posting a news article

To post an article:

1. Write your article. Try to be as concise as possible: brevity is always appreciated.
2. Click the Post article button in the Newsgroup or Article window.
3. An addressing window will appear, with the name of the newsgroup as the address:
4. Edit any details as necessary, save the resulting text file and then click Post.

Posting a reply

To continue a discussion you should post a reply (also called a follow-up) to the relevant article.

1 Select or open the article you want to reply to.

2 Choose Post reply from the Article menu. The Post news to file dialogue will be displayed with the appropriate group filled in already:

• In some cases, replies will be redirected automatically to a different group. For example, if you reply to a message in the news.newusers.announce group, your reply will automatically be sent to news.newusers.questions.

3 Add any additional recipients to whom you want to mail a copy of your article (put the insertion point in the CC or BCC fields and use the Address book if required).

4 Click Editor in the Post news dialogue. An editor window will open with the original article quoted.

5 Type in your comments or the point you want to make.

• It is polite to delete parts of the article which you are not commenting on.
• You should also ensure that in a busy discussion that you attribute comments to the correct authors.

6 Save the edited text.

7 Click Post in the Post news dialogue. The article will be queued and transferred to the news server at your service provider the next time you transfer news.

Sending a reply by mail

It is often more appropriate to reply to a posting by mail. You may want to send information that you don't want the whole world to read, or which is of interest only to the recipient. Sometimes posters will request replies by mail.

1. Select or open the article you want to reply to.
2. Choose Mail reply from the Article menu and Sender or All from the Reply to submenu.
3. The Send mail to file dialogue will be displayed with the author of the article shown as the recipient.
4. Edit and save the reply, and add further recipients as described above.
5. Click Send. The message will be sent the next time you transfer mail.

Posting files

It is possible to post files to newsgroups although it is not recommended that you do so unless you are sure that it is acceptable to a particular group (usually *.sources or *.binaries).

The procedure for attaching files to news articles is exactly like that of attaching files to mail messages: see section 5.11, Attaching files to mail for details.

6.8 Managing news articles

If you are reading news offline you will build up a large database of old articles.

You can see how many articles are stored for a given group in the newsgroup window. The first figure shows the number of unread messages at the start of this session and the second the total number of articles stored on disc. By default, only unread messages are displayed in the newsgroup window.

Displaying and reading old articles

• This facility only applies to offline news.

To display old articles:

1. Open the newsgroup window for the required group.
2. Click Menu inside the window. The Articles menu will be displayed.
3. Choose Show old articles from the Misc submenu.
4. The old articles will be displayed. Their entries in the list will be greyed out. You can open these articles, read them, and save them.

• If you want to keep an old article, you can use the Keep option to mark it: see below. A more permanent solution is to save the article outside Marcel.

Keeping articles

The Keep facility works differently for online and offline news.

• For online newsreading, marking an article to be kept is a temporary option. Next time you access the newsgroup the marked article will be listed again, but it will no longer be marked Keep and it will be expired on the server at the usual time.
• For offline newsreading, marking an article to be kept protects it against expiry. A kept article will be listed in the newsgroup window until it is read again, and will always be listed with a Show old messages command.

To mark an article or group of articles to be kept:

1. Select the article(s) required.
2. Choose Keep from the Article or Selection menu.
3. A K flag will be added to each article listing. If the articles had been read, their entries in the listing will no longer be greyed out.

Marking as read and catching up

If you do not want to read all the articles in a group you can `catch up' by marking some or all of the articles as read.

• Click the Catch up button in the Newsgroup window or choose Mark all read from the Misc menu to mark all articles in a group as read.

You can mark individual articles or groups of articles as read without opening or reading them:

1. Select the article(s) you want to mark as read. To select several adjacent articles, hold down the Ctrl key and drag to select a group, or click Adjust on article titles.
2. Click the Mark read button or choose Mark read from the Article or Selection menu.

You can mark whole groups or groups of groups as read from the window which lists all your subscribed newsgroups.

1. Display your list of subscribed groups (click Select on the Marcel news icon).
2. Select the group(s) you want to mark as read.
3. Click Menu within the window and choose Set all as read from the Group menu.

Marking as unread

You can mark an article as unread. This ensures that it will be displayed again next time you open the newsgroup. To mark an article or group of articles as unread:

1. Select the article(s) to mark as unread. Articles which have been read are distinguished by being `greyed out' in the newsgroup list.
2. Choose Unread from the Article/Selection menu.
3. The selected article(s) will no longer be greyed out.

You can mark whole groups or groups of groups as unread from the window which lists all your subscribed newsgroups.

1. Display your list of subscribed groups (click Select on the Marcel news icon).
2. Select the group(s) you want to mark as unread.
3. Click Menu within the window and choose Reset all unread from the Group menu.

Expiring news

Reading news offline can result in a large amount of old news articles being stored on your hard disc. The Internet Suite provides a facility for you to manage these files and control the amount of storage space given over to them, by expiring (deleting) articles as they reach a certain age or exceed a certain amount of space.

The Internet Suite allows you to set an expiry time or size limit for each group. This is done in the News setup section of the Configuration utility: see Newsgroup management on page 4-28 for details.

Articles are expired automatically whenever you transfer news. If articles are expired by storage limits, the oldest articles are deleted.

You can also manually expire news articles:

1. Display the Transfer submenu from the Internet Suite icon bar menu.
2. Choose Expire news from the Transfer submenu.
3. A status box will report on activity: the name of each subscribed group will be shown as files are expired.

• If you need to read an old news message after you have deleted it by expiry, there are several news archives on the Internet where you can find it. Search for the newsgroup using an Internet search engine, or visit a specialist Web site such as http://groups.google.com/ which will help you locate articles by author and date.

6.9 Troubleshooting/hints and tips

Usenet etiquette

Newsgroups vigorously maintain their own culture, and if you are new to reading them it is worth taking a while simply to read messages and to gauge the tone of the debate before making your own contributions.

On the whole Usenet is a friendly and welcoming community. However, like all communities it has its bad side. In particular, many old hands are keen to criticise newcomers (referred to as `newbies') especially when they breach the etiquette that has evolved around participation in newsgroups.

Marcel's warnings can issue reminders on some of these points: see Setting Marcel warnings.

• Don't cross post your message to several groups unless you are sure that their readership does not overlap.
• Don't post blatant commercial advertising. If you need to advertise, try to find an appropriate group for your article.
• Stay `on topic', and keep your contributions useful and relevant.
• Don't use capital letters. This is regarded as shouting.
• Don't attach files to articles. When possible, quote the URL of a Web or FTP site where the file can be found.
• Keep quotations brief. When replying to a point, you should quote the point you are replying to, not the whole message.

FAQs and charters

Some groups maintain a list of frequently asked questions and their answers, which are posted regularly to the group or which can be downloaded by FTP. Before asking any questions in a group it is worth checking this.

• Download the FAQ or charter for a group using the FAQ and charter commands from the group folder windows.

Some newsgroups post their FAQ list regularly as an article or series of articles. Others store them in .answers groups: for example soc.answers contains FAQs for most soc newsgroups.

Flames

When a discussion gets out of hand and degenerates into personal abuse, this is known as a flame.

• If you are flamed by another Internet user, try not to respond, or try to respond privately by email rather than arguing in front of the whole Internet community.
• If you feel the urge to flame someone, remember that in many countries defamation law can be applied to Internet discussions, and legislation and case law on this subject is growing almost as fast as the Internet itself.
• Remember that Usenet messages are permanently archived in many locations. Anything you say is preserved for ever.

Spams

Occasionally an inappropriate message is cross-posted to many newsgroups at once. This is known as a spam and is a severe breach of Usenet etiquette.

• Remember that spams, especially offensive ones, are rarely perpetrated by the apparent originator of the message.

The best thing to do is to ignore it: if you can't ignore it, send a polite message to the postmaster at the originating service. If you are particularly concerned about Usenet abuse, read the news.admin.net-abuse.* newsgroups.