1. 8 C H A P T E R © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved1 Usenet Newsgroups and Web-based Forums In this chapter, you will learn how Usenet newsgroups enable users to hold virtual conferences over the Internet.

2. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved2 C H A P T E R 8 Objectives: 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.

3. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved3 C H A P T E R 8 Objectives: Subscribe to the newsgroup(s) 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

4. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved4 C H A P T E R 8 Objectives: 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

5. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved5 C H A P T E R 8 Computer Conferencing Usenet newsgroups are based on the concept of computer conferencing. The main difference between a physical conference and a newsgroup is that the Internet is bounded neither by time nor by space

6. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved6 C H A P T E R 8 Universe of Usenet Newsgroups There are more than 10,000 Usenet newsgroups on the Internet. Newsgroups have names like rec.bicycles.racing that describe what the groups are about. The different parts of a newsgroup name are separated by periods

7. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved7 C H A P T E R 8 Usenet Hierarchy Usenet newsgroups are organized hierarchically. In each newsgroup, there is a list of topics. Under each topic, there is a list of subtopics. Under each subtopic comes a list of messages that users have written in response to that subject.

8. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved8 C H A P T E R 8 Newsgroup Readers A program that enables you to read and participate in a newsgroup is known as a newsgroup reader. Both Netscape Communicator and the Microsoft Internet Explorer have newsgroup readers built in.

9. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved9 C H A P T E R 8 How Netscape displays a newsgroup. Newsgroup Readers How Internet Explorer displays a newsgroup.

10. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved10 C H A P T E R 8 Configuring Your Newsgroup Client Before you can read news, you need to configure your newsgroup client. In order to do this, you need to know the name of your newsgroup server. It will be a domain name.

11. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved11 C H A P T E R 8 The Groups Server category of the Netscape Preferences dialog. Configuring Your Newsgroup Client The Internet Connection Wizard helps you configure your newsgroup client..

12. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved12 C H A P T E R 8 Choosing a Newsgroup Your Internet service provider subscribes to a number of newsgroups from which you can choose one or more that you would like to read. Good newsgroups to join first are news.newusers.questions and news.announce.newusers.

13. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved13 C H A P T E R 8 Choosing a Newsgroup using Netscape Communicator The Netscape Newsgroup reader. Netscape displays a list of available newsgroups.

14. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved14 C H A P T E R 8 Choosing a Newsgroup using Microsoft Internet Explorer Outlook Express displays the news server menu. Outlook Express displays the list of available newsgroups.

15. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved15 C H A P T E R 8 Reading a 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. Reading a Newsgroup

16. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved16 C H A P T E R 8 How Netscape Communicator lets you sort newsgroups messages. Reading a Newsgroup How Outlook Express lets you sort newsgroups messages.

17. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved17 C H A P T E R 8 Responding to a Newsgroup 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.

18. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved18 C H A P T E R 8 Creating a New Topic in a Newsgroup While participating in a newsgroup, you may want to start a conversation on a new topic.

19. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved19 C H A P T E R 8 Deleting a Message from a Newsgroup Two rules govern the deleting of messages from a newsgroup. First, you can only delete messages that you write. Second, you should only delete messages to which no one has responded yet

20. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved20 C H A P T E R 8 Finding Newsgroups in Your Profession If you follow the links to CyberFiber at the Interlit Web site, youll get a comprehensive listing of Usenet newsgroups. Another way to find out about newsgroups in your profession is to use the Deja.com usenet search engine, which can perform full-text searches of the Internets newsgroups.

21. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved21 C H A P T E R 8 Finding Newsgroups in Your Profession You can do a keyword search for newsgroups on at topic at deja.com usenet.

22. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved22 C H A P T E R 8 Web-based Discussion Forums Some of the more popular forums reside at the Motley Fool. If you would like to host your own Web-based discussion, you can do that at sites like Delphi, which lets you create your own forums on the Internet.

23. © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved23 C H A P T E R 8 Web-based Discussion Forums The Motley Fool Web-based discussion forum recommends posts in your area of interest.