Your Internet Consultant - The FAQs of Life Online

Chapter 5: Where Can I Discuss My Favorite Film, Food, Fetish...and Just About Anything Else?

• Where Can I Discuss My Favorite Film, Food, Fetish...and Just About Anything Else?
  • 5.1. What is the Usenet?
  • 5.2. How does the Usenet work?
  • 5.3. How is the Usenet organized?
  • 5.4. What are the Usenet's top-level domains?
  • 5.5. What is a local newsgroup?
  • 5.6. How many Usenet newsgroups are there?
  • 5.7. Where can I find a list of all the Usenet newsgroups?
  • 5.8. How much stuff passes through the Usenet?
  • 5.9. What are the most heavily used newsgroups?
  • 5.10. What program should I use to read news?
  • 5.11. What newsgroups should be required reading for newcomers?
  • 5.12. Some of these posts in rec.humor (and elsewhere) are gibberish. What's with that?
  • 5.13. Some people seem to post inane drivel: is there some way that I can avoid seeing their articles?
  • 5.14. How can I search all newsgroups for stuff that interests me?
  • 5.15. What should I know about Usenet "netiquette" before posting?
  • 5.16. Hey, I'd like to post a test message. Where should I send it?
  • 5.17. How do I know my messages are really propagating on the Usenet?
  • 5.18. What is a moderated newsgroup?
  • 5.19. How can I tell if a newsgroup is moderated?
  • 5.20. How do I choose a "distribution" area when posting to the Usenet?
  • 5.21. What is crossposting? How do I do it?
  • 5.22. What's the Followup-To: news header?
  • 5.23. When I crosspost an article to a moderated group and unmoderated groups, it gets mailed to the moderator but isn't posted to the unmoderated groups. Why?
  • 5.24. How can I post messages to the Usenet via electronic mail?
  • 5.25. How are mailing lists different from Usenet newsgroups?
  • 5.26. How do I start a Usenet group?
  • 5.27. Do I really want to go through the trouble of creating a new newsgroup?

Usenet is world's largest distributed bulletin board system, shared by millions of people using hundreds of thousands of computers scattered along the Internet highway. Folks on the Usenet talk about everything--everything!--you can think of, from square dancing to motorcycle maintenance...from the Swedish Chef to Ronald Reagan.

Table of Contents | Previous Section | Next Section